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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume14 Chapter3

2025-12-20T07:21:42Z

Churronzon:

==Chapter 3: Which Side is Winning? – Scoreboard.==

===Part 1===

Around when she abandoned the stolen car, her memory cut out again.

“…”

The next thing she knew, Coronzon was leaning against a cold building wall.

Something had happened.

Aleister had done something.

She had traveled south from District 20 to reach District 9, which contained art schools. The Anglicans were mostly in the north of the city, so she abandoned the stolen car and had planned to take another car (also stolen of course) to reach the southern wall.

But she couldn’t trust in that plan anymore.

She ran her hands along her habit. Pathetically driven by fear and anxiety. She pulled an object smaller than her palm from a fairly unspeakable part of her clothing,.

She couldn’t believe it.

(A wireless game controller? That means it has its own ID and can produce its own signal to provide its location.)

“Y-you would forestall a great demon with this…this piece of junk that doesn’t even cost 5000 yen!? Are you kidding me, Aleisterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!?”

A shape squirmed. And produced a short scream.

No, was that a man forcing himself onto a girl?

An outfit that looked on the border between at-home clothing and sleepwear had been badly torn and the man was reaching for her underwear.

''Perfect.

That was wandering Coronzon’s honest assessment.

It was happening in a small boxlike building.

An Anti-Skill station. A small one. Around the size of what would be called a police box in the outside world.

This was happening there of all places. That public structure should have had someone working in it 365 days a year to keep the city’s peace, but today it had been empty.

With his hands pinning the girl to the floor, the man wasn’t sure how to undo his belt buckle. He raised his head with an odd expression that stuck out his chin more than necessary.

“Huh? Who the hell’re you?”

She didn’t even respond.

Great Demon Coronzon stabbed her hand right through the center of the scum’s gut.

The odor of blood splattered out.

“Bhee, ee, eeeeeeeeeek!!”

He audibly slammed into the shelves behind him and objects came crashing down.

The man of no consequence scrambled out of the Anti-Skill station, his arms flailing wildly.

With his abdominal cavity punctured and a game controller directly stuck inside. Surgical hygiene? Why should Coronzon care about something like that? His bacteria-covered organs might shut down before long, but he would act as a nice decoy as long as he scrambled around and fled before that happened.

In something of a new habit, she held a hand to her woozy head and belatedly realized her hand was stained by that scum’s unclean blood. Everything seemed to piss her off right now. Nothing was going her way.

She lashed out vocally.

“Aleister!! That death is on your hands for that trick you pulled. Are you satisfied? It’s absurd for you to try and save the world. Hee hee, ha ha ha. You’re the one who made the world this way! So give up! You already know everything you do only comes back to bite you!!”

Even so, how many times was it now?

…Or was it really Aleister’s will sending these signs to Kamijou Touma and the other pursuers? Did he really have enough strength to hijack Great Demon Coronzon’s body this many times?

Was it possible she was sending these hints to her pursuers herself? She shuddered. No, it wasn’t possible. How would that benefit her? But could it be a self-destructive desire like the urge people felt to activate a fire alarm when they saw one?

Coronzon clenched her hair tight in her hand. An unpleasant snapping sound followed.

She couldn’t get a read on her own mind anymore.

“U-um.”

It was then that someone nervously spoke to her. The girl seated on the floor looked up at her, completely forgetting to fix her clothing.

With admiration in her eyes.

“…Why are you looking at me like that?”

“Um, thank you…f-for saving me.”

Great Demon Coronzon doubled over and held a hand to her mouth.

She retched.

She couldn’t stand any more of this. Before the girl could say anything more, Coronzon got her unsteady body moving, rushing out of the station. The great demon ''had fled''.

She walked a few meters and then stumbled. She fell down onto the red snow frozen on the ground.

She lay in the snow as thoughts spiraled through her head.

This was wasn’t right.

What was going on?

She had just jabbed her hand right into the gut of an ordinary man who had no connection to magic. With enough force to take his life. And only so she could embed the signal to her location inside his body. There may have been another way, but she had chosen that one so she could enjoy it.

It had been for her. It had been a cruel act of violence befitting a demon.

…But had she ended up saving a life?

Impossible.

She had been acting of her own free will.

She was certain of that.

And yet the result had so completely betrayed her expectations?

Her bad deed had been remade into a good one.

It was the ultimate outrage.

(Was it an act of…)

The being known as a great demon hatefully clenched her back teeth.

Swear poured from her brow. She had a terrible feeling about this.

A wireless game controller? Those weren’t too unusual, but ''where had Aleister gotten one in the few seconds he had taken control''? She doubted he had forced his way into an electronics shop with its metal shutter down for the night. He wouldn’t have had time to search through the game shelf in a discount shop. Did that mean someone had ''just so happened'' to drop one on the side of the street? …Had it been ''a complete coincidence'' as if some greater will were at work?

(Did an act of god transform what I did? Is a good influence distorting my actions? It’s too late, world. Do you really expect me to go along with that? I will take things! ''Too far''!! And destroy the world of my own free will!!!)

===Part 2===

An alarm blared in the District 10 prison.

Telling of an oddity in the same prison.

Someone had already broken in.

“Is it Oniyama!?”

“No, he would have used his authority as a Director to use the proper channels for a visit. This is someone else, so be careful!”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 left the cell while listening to the female secretary speaking over the device on the wall.

The enemy was close.

As close as the corridor leading to the solitary confinement cell hidden deep inside the prison. The silver-haired, dark-skinned woman wore a patchwork of rags that did not look at all hygienic. She was alone. She was even barefoot. An ordinary jailer might tilted their head wondering how she had made it inside such a strictly guarded prison.

But Qliphah Puzzle 545 understood magic too well for that.

She accurately grasped the threat standing before her.

“One of the Anglican’s magicians specialized in anti-magician combat!?”

“I am Necromancer Isabella Theism. You should already know that name after I threatened the city’s leader.”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 was dumbfounded. This prison’s security had already proven itself unable to keep out uninvited guests and now someone like this had made it in?

“The entrance back there was covered by a shocking number of sensors, but they’re only designed to detect living intruders. I recommend tweaking it to detect and instantly attack corpses as well. It’s not that hard to disguise yourself as one.”

“Why are you here? The Anglicans know all about the battle against Coronzon, so you should know my master is in no condition to talk.”

“So I’ve heard. Although I wasn’t around for that part since I was knocked out while dealing with ''some other business''. Regardless, if what I have heard is true, we really are in a grave situation. Right now, I think it is most necessary that we defeat Great Demon Coronzon and bring stability back to the world.”

“Then go tell that to Coronzon, not my master!”

“Oh, do you know where she is?”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 fell silent.

Isabella breathed a sigh thick with exasperation.

“That is the real question. What I need right now is information and a few coincidental hints just aren’t enough. A vast network has been laid out across Academy City: security cameras, security robots, drones, satellites, and so on. Tracking her requires bringing the city’s data infrastructure back to full functionality. And it if is necessary to settle things with Coronzon…as much as I hate to, what choice do I have but to save your new Board Chairman? I can’t have him go on sleeping with the Master Key clutched in his hand.”

“…”

Isabella Theism seemed unbothered by Qliphah Puzzle 545’s skeptical look.

The look on her face said she had expected it.

Not long before, she had been in charge of the group physically taking control of Academy City and attempting to use the city as a disposable tool to defeat Coronzon. It would be weird if Qliphah Puzzle 545 did trust her right away.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 glared at her and asked a question.

“Your clothes reek of death. You’re that necromancer who was arguing with my master over the phone… Can a death magician really heal a living human?”

Isabella Theism grabbed her rags in her hands and lifted them upwards. All at once.

She was wearing underwear below, but it was very thin and small.

Two healthy brown objects jiggled there.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 was a girl, but she still flinched back at being shown this all of a sudden.

“Uh?”

“Take a close look. My ribs and sternum were badly broken and one sharp bone fragment pierced my right lung. Can you see any of that? What’s your assessment?”

“You have all your ribs and there’s no bruising from internal bleeding. It’s all been healed?”

When the demon girl approached and took a close look, Isabella averted her eyes awkwardly.

Apparently this was embarrassing for her after all.

“Loko Atisou. There is more to Voodoo than making zombies. It is a polytheistic religion with all sorts of gods, so it of course has a god of medicine.”

Just like any other religion, Voodoo also functioned to govern and help the local people. The violent and combative side was only meant for emergencies when the group as a whole was attacked by an external enemy or a rebellion. That wasn’t all it could do.

It had not been invented for use in horror movies, so there was a benevolent Voodoo that listened to the people’s worries and healed their injuries and disease.

Healing was a challenging territory for Demon Qliphah Puzzle 545 who specialized in the Qliphoth that contained all that was impure and immoral. She would have to start with a curse or an attack and then build it in reverse. Needing to include that conversion in every single step meant it would be much faster to borrow the power of a god who directly dealt in medicine.

Isabella concluded her valid evidence had been accepted, so she lowered her rags.

“I am willing to view you as a magic side doctor. And I understand how this aligns with your interests. So where will you start, witch doctor?”

“Well, I do have a few things on hand. Zombie powder, for example.”

“Z-zombie powder!?”

Despite being a demon, Qliphah Puzzle 545’s eyes bulged at the mere mention of that name. But Isabella Theism sighed in exasperation.

“Voodoo zombie powder…well, real Voodoo prefers to use French more than English. But anyway, it isn’t a toxin sprinkled on a rotting corpse to control it.”

She seemed to be implying that she did not use real Voodoo.

No matter how much she knew about it, she was only illicitly using their excellent techniques.

“It is a punishment in which a living human is put in a state of living death where they cannot think or make any decisions and will do whatever they are told. So you can think of it as a medicine used ''to prevent someone from dying'' until their punishment is complete.”

“You mean like how the highly toxic digitalis can also be used as a cardiac stimulant?”

“And in the other direction, salt and sugar can kill despite being necessary nutrients for life. The materials themselves are neither good nor bad. It all comes down to how they are used.”

===Part 3===

An ambulance echoed through one corner of District 20.

Kamijou glanced in its direction.

Takitsubo Rikou…couldn’t go any further. With the frozen snow, the dead traffic signals, and the more concrete threat of the scouts, he was thankful the ambulance had actually come when they called.

A large dog hopped into the same ambulance.

“I will go with her.”

“Hey, are you sure about that?”

“I am not much help without the A.A.A. And Coronzon will be cautious of my wonderful nose now that I have demonstrated its use. There is nothing left for me to do on the front line. So I wish to contribute by removing this worry from your hearts, allowing you to move more freely. Listen to me. Do not worry about this girl any longer.”

Kamijou and the others could only watch the ambulance go.

There was still more they had to do.

But…

“We have a report regarding the entertainment location signal presumed to be a sign from Aleister. Unfortunately, it was found embedded in some man. So back to square one.”

“Hey, that doesn’t tell us nothing. If we know what path the dying decoy took, we should be able to figure out where he contacted Coronzon.”

This was all they had to discuss on their way to a corner of District 9.

It was now 3 AM.

This was where they had lost Coronzon’s trail.

Kamijou Touma sighed softly while listening to Kanzaki and Othinus’s discussion.

All they could do was wait.

Nothing pained Kamijou more than having nothing to do when he knew Coronzon was even now on the move. It was all over once she crossed the wall somewhere and left the city. Yet the city was too large to search at random.

He had decided he wouldn’t just wait around, but the physical reality wasn’t cooperating with his personal wishes.

Index, Kanzaki, and some others were apparently running a magical search, but that still wasn’t enough to track down Coronzon.

They needed to go after her from the science side as well, but Mikoto alone wasn’t enough.

Simply tracking down the fugitive was hard enough on its own, but Kamijou couldn’t shake the feeling that Coronzon was still hiding something. Some powerful move or sudden twist he never would have considered. Something they couldn’t even imagine while continuing to wander through this labyrinth, but also something that would again overturn everything if they failed to prevent it.

Kamijou Touma’s thoughts turned to a certain individual.

Perhaps it was all reliant on ''him'' recovering…

===Part 4===

In the prison’s solitary confinement cell, Board Chairman Accelerator was lying in bed unconscious and hooked up to medical equipment. Even Academy City’s #1 would be killed by an attack now. It was unusual for Qliphah Puzzle 545 to bring an outsider this deep into the prison at all.

That outsider was Necromancer Isabella Theism.

The current situation required going beyond the usual.

“How exactly are you going to heal my master?”

“Legba Atibon.”

That was all she said.

It was the name of a gatekeeper god who managed all ceremonies. So no matter which god’s power the ceremony was meant to borrow, you first sought the gatekeeper god’s permission. And because he appeared in all ceremonies, there were no specific dates or locations that boosted his power.

Something emerged from Accelerator’s arm.

It was a transparent shard only a few millimeters long. A piece of a broken LCD monitor.

More followed. Like floating leaves following a river’s current, more and more shards silently slid out of his body.

Not a single drop of blood was shed and no apparent wounds were made.

Even though all these shards were located in extremely dangerous position near major arteries and organs.

“Y-you’re already done!?”

“They did not belong and the human body has several functions meant to automatically eliminate such things. There was no need for dangerous surgery. I only had to make some adjustments to those functions.”

Of course, thoughtlessly boosting them would have only triggered rejection, where his own immune system attacked his body. Only a professional necromancer with sufficient training could pull this off.

Isabella sighed softly.

“You know glass shards aren’t enough to keep a human mind locked away indefinitely, don’t you? Another task is even more important.”

“Breaking the curse.”

“Voodoo can handle that easily. A zombie is in a controllable state of living death by stopping the heart with a poison and then restarting it with an antidote. Antidotes and curse breaking are built into the ceremony.”

As she spoke, Isabella stuck her fingers into the seams of her rags. She pulled out various vials. They contained powders, liquids, dried leaves and roots, living insects…and more.

The demon girl was accustomed to dirty and impure things, but she still recoiled.

“Ew. Did I just wander into a museum of the bizarre?”

“Think of it like a 72-color colored pencil set and get excited. Even if you can theoretically represent everything in the world with the three primary colors, the actual task isn’t so simple, is it?”

The brown woman got to work. Swiftly and accurately.

It took more than a single name this time.

Meaning even she didn’t see this as a simple task.

“Voodoo is flexible enough to let you include any supernatural being as a weapon. Qliphah Puzzle. And 545 was it? I will include you in my system.”

“I will do anything for my master, but will including me change anything?”

“Just as salt and sugar can kill and just as toxic digitalis can be a cardiac stimulant, nothing in this world is a pure poison. There is simply a way of using it as a poison. And also a way of using it is a medicine.”

Voodoo did not think of gods as good or evil, but it was common for the same god to be included on both sides. That meant the gods did not determine their stance by the human conception of good and evil. Instead of the many gods being divided onto the opposite sides of good and evil, the many gods could freely move between the two sides depending on the time and situation. That was what made them all-purpose, but it also made them tricky to use. It required a priest with specialized training to handle them.

Thus, the necromancer did not avoid this being known as an artificial demon.

She simply viewed her as a nonhuman being with supernatural power.

If Isabella determined how much of her to use, she could be used to save a life.

“Here goes.”

“Okay!”

“Through Gatekeeper God Legba Atibon, I contact Medicine God Loko Atisou, and link the ceremony terminal to Messenger God Brav Gede.”

Voodoo practitioners did not think of using magic on their own.

They borrowed a compatible god’s power to achieve a miracle.

In fact, they would even borrow another god’s power to send their request to the god they wanted.

In Voodoo, if a miracle was beyond human capability, then a human voice could not even reach the necessary god on its own. They required a separate link to get through.

Or to put it another way…

They relied on one god to call on another. So by going through Artificial Demon Qliphah Puzzle 545 (who did not exist in the Voodoo system), Isabella should be able to make a request beyond what could normally be asked of the Voodoo gods.

It was an impossible shortcut.

Or an illicit backdoor.

“Through the gathering of Qliphah, I beseech Baron Samdi. Divide this soul into five territories and reveal the part that has been intentionally placed in an endless spiral. Human individuality is managed by the Ti Bon Ange. Reveal to me the wicked power severing its proper link. Just like the zombie powder, it takes the form of a toxin.”

Something like bluish-white sparks burst forth.

That was not part of the ceremony.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 thought it might be a trap left by Coronzon, but it wasn’t.

It was Academy City’s #1.

He was no normal human. Had his body itself reacted in some way?

“The lime poison is an unstoppable assassination spell for it produces a different toxin each time the same ceremony is performed. This in turn proves that any and all toxins can be cured as long as their ingredients are known. I have already seen with my own eyes the wicked toxin unjustly robbing him of his consciousness! With its identity seen, it must be curable!!”

The smell of blood hung in the air.

Isabella Theism had a shallow cut on her right cheek.

The bluish-white sparks were harmful.

But she did not stop the ceremony.

Coronzon could not be allowed to escape Academy City. But they had nowhere near enough data to track her down. They needed the new Board Chairman and the Master Key he held. Academy City’s functions had to be fully recovered before they could catch up to Coronzon.

A single necromancer’s survival wasn’t that big a deal here.

But if the entire world were destroyed, then everything Isabella Theism wanted to protect would die with it.

She couldn’t allow that.

No matter what.

“Answer me, Medicine God Loko Atisou. The vessel for your holy power and the ingredients for the medicine are gathered here!! …No external incision is needed. The conditions to save you were within your body from the start. Thus, I call upon you, separated mind, reactive yourself from within your body and break free of your cage!!”

Light surged out.

Isabella Theism lurched back.

The necromancer was struck by a destructive whip of something much like electricity. Unable to bear the blow, she toppled backwards. Several pieces of medical equipment screamed out with their electronic tones.

And nothing happened.

There was no change on the bed. The smell of blood came from Isabella. Sleeping Accelerator did not change at all, for better or for worse.

The Level 5 said to be Academy City’s strongest did not wake.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 had to accept it.

They had failed.

It was so dark, shadowy, heavy.

She felt crushed by the air itself when a voice reached her ears.

Isabella Theism was whispering.

“Kh… What…now?”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 didn’t have time to ask what she meant by that.

The necromancer continued.

“In the worst case, I could control him as a corpse to have him use the Master Key.”

“But…”

“Zombie powder does not control rotting corpses. It prevents someone from dying to keep them in a state of living death. But by altering that interpretation, it would be possible. It can be used just like in a horror movie.”

“No! That isn’t the same as saving him!!”

Her opposition was only natural.

''Assuming'' saving Board Chairman Accelerator was your goal.

“But aren’t we here to use the Master Key to restore Academy City and track down Coronzon!?”

Their goals were defined at slightly different points.

Isabella Theism wanted Accelerator’s help to protect the world from Coronzon. The #1’s recovery was only a means to that end.

Explaining that up front showed that Isabella was more reasonable than most. She could have lied to Qliphah Puzzle 545 and then gone ahead and used the zombie powder ''as a poison''.

“You need to choose. No one has sufficient nerve to make a ghastly choice. And you are the only point of contact I have left!” shouted Isabella Theism.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 would never let her do that. But how would her beloved Board Chairman have responded? The #1 would want to protect Academy City and the wider world beyond its walls.

(Master…)

===Part 5===

Kamijou and the others were in District 9.

They still hadn’t moved from there and were stuck waiting.

Mikoto and Index were frequently conversing. Probably a sign of their impatience.

“The nearby districts that border the city wall would be the most obvious option, but this is complicated by the fact that Coronzon has no restriction preventing her from returning to a district she’s already been to.”

“That means we can’t treat this like a game of concentration. So no matter how far we pursue her, we never eliminate any of the options.”

Wings audibly flapped at the air. Kamijou had seen the Bologna Succubus licking her wings and teasing them with her fingertips before, but they must have recovered enough for her to fly. Neither one said anything, but she took off into the night sky with Blodeuwedd the Bouquet hanging on again.

Kamijou spotted Itsuwa of the Amakusas.

“How’s Tsushima? What happened to her?”

“We can use recovery magic, so as long as someone isn’t actually dead, we can heal them even if it takes some fairly forceful methods. And it helped that you suppressed her bleeding until we arrived.”

At that point, Itsuwa’s tone dropped worriedly.

“You can’t push yourself too hard either. I heard you passed out earlier.”

“Sorry… I should’ve yelled before I passed out.”

“No! That isn’t what I meant…”

But he had let Coronzon get away.

Either way, he couldn’t fight while applying pressure to Tsushima’s neck wound. And could he have fought her on his own regardless? He really didn’t see any way he could have won there. But he could have at least informed someone of the threat. There must have been a way. Even if he he was rapidly losing consciousness, he could have triggered his phone’s alarm or the camera flash. There had to have been something.

“Fool. Break yourself out of that meaningless negative spiral. Only you finds it ''pleasant''.”

The wicked woman could be harsh at times like this. Refreshingly so.

There was no way he could have come up with a clever idea when he was passing out, his brain was growing dull, and his thoughts were fading fast. He knew that.

(Still…)

It was easy enough to talk of battling Coronzon and settling things with her, but that also meant battling Aleister who shared her body.

…What did he really think about that?

Aleister was desperately struggling within Coronzon to provide them with even the smallest hint. Was Kamijou prepared to fight that human, win…and say goodbye?

If he couldn’t do it, humanity was doomed.

The conditions placed on the opposite end of the scales could not have been simpler or more solid.

Still.

Kamijou’s thoughts cut off there.

He looked up. Agnese, Lucia, and that group were off in a corner whispering among themselves.

“?”

===Part 6===

In the same district, not far from Kamijou and the others, stooped Angelene was waving her hands anxiously.

“Ehhhh!? Saint Georgios’s Fire? Is the Vatican really trying to defeat Coronzon!? A-are you sure they aren’t just using this as an excuse to destroy Academy City?”

“Some of them might think it would be safer to destroy it before it’s officially absorbed into the Anglican Church.”

Lucia appeared to be doing her best to remain calm.

The conversation wasn’t just between Agnese, Lucia, and Angelene. More than 250 nuns would be listening in through the Barbara Branch communication spiritual item.

Agnese had her doubts about that too. How far into the future were the Roman Catholic cardinals looking? Even though none of it would matter if the world were destroyed tomorrow.

The Former Agnese Force had already been told to evacuate.

They were to abandon Academy City and the Anglicans and escape the city with only the Roman Catholics among them. They had been given a few different conditions for activating Saint Georgios’s Fire, but it all boiled down to one thing: the cardinals would use that large-scale spell no matter what happened. The only difference was if it happened sooner or later.

The branch between launching it or not had already passed.

Being stubborn here was fine, but anyone who remained would die.

With zero exceptions.

Lucia looked to Agnese. She may have been peering into her eyes.

“This force is under your command, Sister Agnese. What will we do?”

“I do not have the right to order you all to die.” Agnese smiled bitterly as she spoke to them all. “You are not obligated or bound to stay. From here on, this is all voluntary. If you choose to leave Academy City, you don’t need your Barbara Branch. The Anglicans are experts at combating human magic. They might be able to track your location using it, so abandon it and escape in complete silence.”

“Wh-what can we accomplish by staying?”

“Protect Academy City from Saint Georgios’s Fire of course,” replied Agnese, her voice low.

That human-targeted attack wouldn’t work against inhuman Coronzon. So stopping the spell that would cause asphyxiation and ruptured organs would not affect the battle against Coronzon.

“Think of it like the neck of an hourglass. Saint Georgios’s Fire is large-scale magic that gathers power from the two billion Catholics across the globe without their knowledge and allows the cardinals in the Vatican to control it. Once gathered together, the attack travels through the ley lines to reach enemy territory and scatters back into two billion attacks after emerging from the ground. Then it causes enough damage to destroy a city.”

A city. Was that at least better than Adikalika that would have affected the entire Italian Peninsula? Agnese smiled a little. So they were retaliating with a smaller attack. The Vatican’s cardinals really had found a way to lower the psychological hurdle as far as possible.

“T-two billion. Th-th-then I don’t see what we can possibly do!”

“''That means it must be a long-range spell.'' In fact, it must travel all the way around the earth. Have you forgotten how Index stopped Adikalika? There must be any number of options: diverting its aim, cutting off the flow of the ley lines before it arrives here, or even preventing the two billion powers from gathering at the Vatican.”

Her argument had to be correct.

But she understood full well that this was wishful thinking.

Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been sweating so heavily in this cold weather.

(Even if the theory is solid, we’re talking about power from two billion people… Can we really stand up to that sheer force of quantity? That will likely be the greatest obstacle.)

There was no guaranteed method. If they stayed too long, they would lose the lives they could have saved.

They had to build it all up starting now. They had nothing at the moment to tell them it would be alright.

So Agnese Sanctis could not demand her companions join her in this.

In the worst case, she would have to stand up to the two billion all on her own.

And…

“I volunteer.”

That was Lucia.

She used to be so fastidious she would rage when so much as touched by a non-Catholic, but now she was the first to raise her hand and volunteer to fight to protect Academy City.

“What? The Roman Catholic Church is the largest sect in the world, so we must consider the world as a whole. Of course I will reach out a helping hand when lives are at risk. I couldn’t call myself a Catholic if I wouldn’t.”

She wasn’t alone.

Angelene was trembling, but she too chose to raise her hand. Even if only a little.

“U-umm. I volunteer. I mean, if we ran away now, then the Anglicans ''and'' the Catholics would be after us. So I want to at least keep a place for us with one of them. Our home is the women’s dorm in London and, if we want to return there with a clear conscience, we have to save Academy City!”

More and more voices came over the Barbara’s Branch communication spiritual item.

It only provided audio, but Agnese could easily imagine them leaning forward in defiance.

“Sister Apollonia. I volunteer too.”

“Sister Paula. I’ll volunteer if there are any tickets left.”

“Sister Agata. I-I volunteer!”

…This was who they were.

They hadn’t started out this way, of course. They hadn’t forgotten the brutal violence they subjected Orsola Aquinas and Kamijou Touma to. But Agnese and these more than 250 nuns had grown enough to say this during such a crisis.

After seeing another way to live. After being accepted with a smile after everything they had done.

It must have taken trust to do that, so they couldn’t turn their backs on that trust.

Did this mean they all felt that way?

Lucia pushed the conversation onward.

“Sister Agnese. We haven’t heard your answer yet. What will you do?”

Agnese Sanctis raised her head.

She stared straight ahead and raised her voice to a roar.

“I volunteer!! …Now that you’ve chosen this for yourself, you had better be ready. I said I don’t have the right to order you all to die. So no matter how bad this gets, I will not let you take the easy way out and choose an emotional death. Cry and wail all you like, I will bring every last one of you back alive even if it means crawling through hell on earth!!”

===Part 7===

Dion Fortune.

Moina Mathers.

Their fight in District 7 had passed the bounds of human ability. They had simply been fighting too long. No human could run a full marathon at the speed of a 50-meter dash. But a battle on that level had been going on for hours now. A Saint who could break the sound barrier in an instant and then instantly run out of gas would have died well before this. This was only possible for a magician created using a tarot deck as a grimoire.

That was the strength of someone who could absorb massive power from the ley lines and wield that instead of having to refine magic power from their own life force.

(I certainly don’t want to be killed right away, but this kind of endless quagmire isn’t fun either.)

One reason for the stalemate was Moina Mathers’s spiritual item.

Her tattva cards were certainly powerful, but using the visual stimuli of the bright colors drawn on the cards to guide her mind created a weakness as well. Visual stimuli. …That meant a third party could peek at the card and know the element of the next attack.

“Responding after seeing the card always puts me one step behind, though. But if I could predict what was coming next before you drew the card, I would be a step ahead and beat you.”

“…”

“But I’ll have gathered all the data I need soon. You shouldn’t have been throwing those tattva cards around like that. It’s like the scorebook written up by the cute manager of the baseball team. You’ve thrown too many pitches. How many until it’s enough? I will kill you before you can act.”

Moina Mathers said nothing.

But instead of a tattva card, she suddenly waved her palette knife through the air in an orderly pattern.

This was different.

“?”

Something rose up.

From the red snowy ground. And more followed it. A lot more. Like sinister flowers blossoming all around her.

They were colorful silhouettes seemingly made of a mixture of yellow, blue, white, red, and other colors of paint.

Except their heads were giant red roses.

“Ah, ahh, ah…”

Dion Fortune stood stock still and her voice escaped her like air from a deflating balloon.

Because she knew what her teacher and nemesis was doing.

“Wh-why do you look so proud of yourself? You didn’t think this was one of your successes, did you? How airheaded a wife can you be!?”

As his wife, Moina had devoted herself to supporting that uncontrollable genius magician named Mathers, but not everything had gone perfectly and she had made a few major mistakes after her husband’s death: her unproductive conflict with her student Fortune, her failure to silence some baseless rumors (on the level of a murder), and – as the most extreme example – this. The Mass Production of Low Quality Magicians Debacle in which she used a correspondence class to grant entrance to the secret magic cabal she managed for the faceless strangers who would pay for the privilege.

Dion Fortune was cautious of course. Even if they were of low quality, a magician was still a magician. She didn’t know if they refined their own magic power or if they absorbed it from the ley lines, but she knew she wasn’t going to like whatever attacks they used. If she didn’t switch her mindset from one-on-one to a group battle, she would be crushed by the group even if she defeated one of them. Or so she thought.

But even that was a fatal mistake.

“Eh?”

Moina Mathers’s face was right in front of her.

She had hopped down from the giant black cat and approached within 100 centimeters.

This was immediately after she switched tactics from a single destructive attack to a numbers game. She had slipped through Dion Fortune’s blind spot.

It didn’t matter how Dion Fortune twisted her body.

Here.

At this one spot, she couldn’t respond right away!?

(Damn!!)

Moina Mathers held a black blade. The utterly twisted object looked like it was made from a large quantity of oil paint or something that had been forcibly dried and hardened. This was probably a self-defensive strike – a jab – with a saber that she had learned from her husband Mathers who enjoyed fencing. The sharp tip was clearly aimed at her opponent’s throat.

Dion Fortune had misread this.

The biggest threat was not the giant cat, not the tattva cards, and not the group of rose-faced mass-produced magicians. ''She should have been most cautious of Moina Mathers herself''. She should have known that from the start, but the countless tricks had distracted her.

The saber was coming.

It was more deadly than a long spear, a hammer, or the knife of an enemy who had snuck up on her.

(Oh, god. Am I actually dead this time?)

Even if she did have a single second left to move, she would have used it to kill Moina too. She gritted her teeth and focused all her attention on the black box. And…

Sparks flew.

The orange sparks of two blades clashing.

Another piece of metal intersected Moina’s black saber to form a cross.

Instead of blocking the sharp jab, this struck the side of the blade to divert it away. Orange sparks decorated the darkness like remnants of the attack’s deadly power.

A palette knife was responsible.

That was the weapon of a certain magician who specialized in art and had completed many ceremonial grounds and spiritual items by giving real form to the many ideas the other magicians couldn’t bring out of their heads.

“Honestly,” said a calm voice. “It’s sad you’re struggling this much to defeat such a defective version of me. You’re the one who researched all the nutrients in different foods and who insisted Kabbalah was Western yoga, so I would have thought you could boost your physical abilities somewhat.”

By the time she said this, a dull sound had left the palette knife. Followed by another. They were mechanical sounds like might come from a sewing machine. She swept the saber aside and sent accurately jabs right toward the now-defenseless Moina’s throat and chest, but Moina used the guard and pommel to forcibly defend herself.

The same techniques.

The same skill.

The same ability.

Wasn’t there just one magician who could do that?

Yes, and ''despite being the kind of person who would casually rescue the frog-faced doctor who was nearly a stranger to her after happening across him'', she was always so harsh with the student she had known for so long.

Dion Fortune gulped and spoke.

“Mis…tress?”

There was only one person she addressed that way.

And it wasn’t the Moina who Coronzon had created.

Black Cat Witch Mina Mathers stood beside her student.

===Part 8===

In the District 10 prison’s solitary confinement cell, all the efforts of good Voodoo and the artificial demon’s power had failed to revive the new Board Chairman.

Despair was threatening to solidify the air itself.

Until someone who didn’t belong showed up to smash that mood.

“Bonjour. I did some searching within your metal shutters and your prison store had a decent selection. What, do the people serving their time after a guilty verdict get to eat chocolat if a visitor buys it for them? And this one has brandy in it. I knew Academy City cared a lot about human rights, but even the prisoners have it good here. Munch, munch.”

Isabella Theism couldn’t just ignore this.

“Kihara Goukei!?” she shouted, eyes wide.

“Whoa, I give, I give, I give!! I only have one heart left! My extra lives are down to zero! I could never let myself die if I ''truly'' kicked the bucket over a pointless scuffle like this!!”

She played it off as a joke, but she could probably ''still survive even if her last one was destroyed''. Maybe she couldn’t believe it without saying it aloud even though no one asked, but that level of cheating the system was standard for science side monsters.

Then someone else popped out from behind the suspicious woman. A much smaller someone.

“Misaka had her bring her here, says Misaka as Misaka introduces her.”

“Huh? Aren’t you master’s…?”

Now it was Qliphah Puzzle 545’s eyes that widened. Did she know that girl?

It seemed odd for a little girl to be this deep inside a strictly-guarded prison, but Isabella wanted to focus on the more dangerous person.

“How did you get in here!?”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 gave her a “you’re one to talk” look, but the brown necromancer didn’t seem to notice. And…

“Eh? Was it supposed to be hard? I just walked on in.”

Only Qliphah Puzzle 545 accepted that answer.

…That was probably due to Last Order. The new Board Chairman must have secretly given her a free pass inside. Academy City’s #1 was strict with himself and others, but he also showed occasional signs of doing things with no thought to the consequences.

Kihara Goukei knew none of this and tilted her head.

“So what is an experte like you doing sitting around? Hurry up and do your job. I can’t get any of my work done without the Board Chairman awake.”

She made it sound so easy in her ignorance.

Isabella breathed a heavy sigh.

“Zombie powder is not just a deadly toxin. It rules both life and death, so there is a chance of it reviving him if I boost its effects. But…”

“But?”

“You probably already know since it shows up in horror movies sometimes, but zombie powder uses puffer fish. Tetrodotoxin. Blindly increasing the amount will kill him before it can begin to revive him.”

“Oh, is that all? I know just the thing to use! Anisakiropen Ω!! It is a très lethal nerve stimulant. Or should I call it a synthetic toxin developed in Academy City that kills instantly?”

Isabella Theism’s eyes widened.

Kills instantly? Did that mean it was guaranteed to kill without even getting into if it was a poison or a medicine!?

“Are you trying to make sure he dies!?”

“Oh, come now. Tetrodotoxin kills by suppressing the nerves while anisakiropen Ω kills by exciting the nerves. Have you never heard the stories? Maybe it’s a local Academy City legend. They say if you administer them both at once, their effects cancel each other out.”

And if the puffer fish poison didn’t work, Isabella could give him as much zombie powder as necessary without adverse effects. The simple arithmetic did seem to say that, but…

“W-w-w-wait just a minute,” said Qliphah Puzzle 545. “That research said the effects weren’t ''completely'' canceled out. The poison that should have killed the instant it was swallowed was only delayed by a few hours!!”

Yes, tetrodotoxin and anisakiropen Ω were deadly poisons. Even a small amount in the body would kill.

It was simple enough to say the two canceled each other out, but if even that “small amount” of one or the other remained afterwards, his life would still be lost. The amount of either couldn’t be not enough or too much. And there was no way of ensuring they canceled out to precisely zero.

“Yes, in the normale world, that is true.”

“Wait, are you saying…?”

“I have a fundamental question for you: ''are either of us normale''?”

Of course not.

Necromancer Isabella Theism used Voodoo in order to use methods of controlling death and flesh from all over the world. Kihara Goukei had gathered every form of scientific immortality within her own body.

They could take suicidal actions that would cause death 100% of the time in anyone else, but they would be fine.

“Misaka will help too,” said the little girl.

Neither Kihara Goukei nor Isabella Theism knew the situation there. Nor did they know how exactly she could help.

“Misaka will do anything, so don’t give up on him, says Misaka as Misaka bows her head to you.”

But they both thought this was enough.

Technology wasn’t always the key to saving a life. Because they had pursued all the theories and numbers so far, they knew quite well that it was the ridiculously old-fashioned psychological matters that ultimately determined the fate of someone on the verge of death.

(This is probably more of a job for ''that other doctor'', but I will just have to handle it this time. …But I will probably have to buy him a fancy mango for encroaching on his territory.)

Then again, the presence of magic may have placed this beyond that doctor’s jurisdiction.

Today’s star was Isabella who lived outside that jurisdiction.

Kihara Goukei only had to support her.

The two spoke as one.

“Let’s do this.” “Let’s do this.”

The mood had changed.

But that wasn’t all.

The child’s presence kept the mood from deteriorating.

“Misaka saw the city, says Misaka as Misaka remembers the way here.”

Isabella Theism and Kihara Goukei were doing some kind of work she didn’t understand.

The sound of something hard being crushed up felt out of place among all the beeping medical equipment.

Last Order stared at the #1 from his bedside.

“It was horrible. Everything was empty but not just because it’s so late. Everyone is too scared to go outside, says Misaka as Misaka gives a report.”

Red and black.

The strange combined drug did not have to be swallowed.

It made a sticky sound as it was applied to his wounds with their fingertips.

This was a necessary treatment, but it really shouldn’t have been done with a small child present.

But Last Order accepted it all head on.

And, seeing not even a twitch of an eyebrow in response to the treatment, she took Accelerator’s hand. Every part of him was full of electrodes and tube needles.

She held his hand tight between her hands.

“Yomikawa got hurt. She said it was minor, but it might not have been, says Misaka as Misaka shakes her head. She could have died.”

A shrill sound rang from the medical equipment.

An alarm. His stable condition was collapsing. An eternal standstill was no different from death, but Isabella and Goukei’s efforts had clearly thrown off that balance.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 was visibly anxious, but Last Order’s eyes did not waver.

“Being alone is scary…”

The magical necromancer and the scientific Kihara were each too strong a medicine.

That alone couldn’t bring back his sealed mind.

But that was why…

“And Misaka doesn’t just mean Misaka. Everyone has people they care for. They trust the new Academy City you built to protect them. So Misaka wants you to live up to their expectations, says Misaka as Misaka calls out to you.”

A deep electrical “zap!” split the air.

It shot right past Last Order.

This was not a failure of the magic or technology. Something was wrong with Accelerator’s body on the bed.

The electricity causing the air to burst was so powerful it would likely blow the girl’s body away if even the tiniest extremity grazed her.

“Can you leave things like this?”

She didn’t even blink.

Last Order was looking only at the face of the boy lying in the bed.

“The Academy City you want is filled with so much death.”

These were not all kind words.

They were also harsh.

To truly care for someone was not to blindly agree with everything they did.

This girl had the strength to scold him.

Because she trusted their relationship was too strong for something like this to break it.

“A normal person could give up. You didn’t want to become Academy City’s #1, so you don’t have to cling to that strongest position forever. …But this isn’t about that, is it? says Misaka as Misaka is certain of her words. ''Your position as Board Chairman is the one thing you took for yourself.'' You decided for yourself to improve this city and create a city of science with no hidden side and where no one needs to suffer or live in fear. You chose to create a safe and peaceful world. So you can’t take the easy road here. You chose this path, so you have to see it through to the end, says Misaka as Misaka states the obvious.”

Her voice was not as loud as a thunderclap.

In fact, her words were so quiet no one in the small cell could hear them except their intended target.

“Hey.”

She brought her mouth up next to the slumbering Board Chairman’s ear.

And the small girl whispered.

“How long are you going to make ''him'' wait?”

Everything went quiet.

That wasn’t just a psychological metaphor.

The alarm from the medical equipment surrounding the bed had really and truly ''stopped''.

Meaning…

“Damn…it.”

A voice spoke.

From the bed.

“So I don’t even have the right to die and go to hell? Isn’t that a bit much? ''You are exactly right, though.''”

This is what the new Board Chairman would do.

The one who had decided for himself to protect the peace and safety of Academy City would get back up here.

And because he thought that, Accelerator opened his eyes.

===Part 9===

The Former Agnese Force was short on time.

If Saint Georgios’s Fire were activated, everyone living in Academy City would die. No matter where they ran, they could not prevent their organs from rupturing from within.

Power had already been gathered from two billion people around the world and was being reworked into a single spell. They were waiting for the moment when, like the other end of an hourglass’s neck, it would return to two billion attacks in enemy territory. Thus, they couldn’t stop the attack by preventing the power from being gathered.

Academy City was a fixed location. Diverting the aim would be difficult.

Which meant…

“We need to stop Saint Georgios’s Fire as it approaches through the ley lines. We can do it when it’s still a single mass. Before it emerges from the ground and disperses into two billion flames! That’s our only shot!!”

That was simple enough to say, but influencing the ley lines meant effort at the level of tearing down a mountain or filling in a sea. They couldn’t physically manage that, so they would have to wear down their minds to do the work on that front.

“We start with this.”

Agnese pulled out a deck of ordinary tarot cards.

They gathered below a tree where the red snow hadn’t fallen and she laid eight cards face down on the ground.

An attack traveling through the ley lines would arrive immediately after it was activated. Even if it was traveling halfway around the world.

“But that same ley line connection means some of the Vatican’s data should leak out. If we know how close the spell is to completion, we’ll know the time limit.”

A sizzling sound meant she didn’t even need to flip the cards over.

One of the eight cards had burned black and melted.

The damage spread to a second and then a third.

Lucia’s eyes widened.

“They’re farther along than I thought!”

“H-has something changed!?”

“The Vatican must have realized we can see them. They’re going to act!!”

This must have triggered one of the three conditions the cardinal had given. Or had those conditions just been an excuse and weren’t really necessary?

The Former Agnese Force had been warned to evacuate, but their survival had only been a “stretch goal”. Apparently they weren’t worth saving no matter what.

That meant there was no time left at all.

This was like going to check on the river during a bad storm. It was a risky move. They had known that, but they couldn’t let this deadly attack get past them.

Agnese, Lucia, and Angelene each picked up their spiritual items.

The other nuns had wooden wheels, coin bags, and other items found in the legends of different holy people, but Agnese used a Symbolic Weapon called the Lotus Wand. And instead of controlling a specific element like the rod of fire or the cup of water, this impressive item could control all elements.

The Vatican was about halfway around the globe from Academy City. They would have liked to gradually melt their minds into the ley line and construct countless barriers at an even interval along the path here, but it was too late for that. The most they could do was place one thick barrier directly in front of Academy City.

Agnese Sanctis gave a shout.

“Saint Barbara is the holy woman who invited the lord’s righteous light in through the three windows. Unseen path, obey our kind objective. A path is a tool of guidance – a vein carved into the earth to guide the righteous. Harmful power, do not advance! Halt! Thou have no right to tread hither!!”

Her breath caught.

There was no flash of light or explosive boom. But a thick, invisible pressure did assault her.

The silver Lotus Wand audibly strained in her grasp.

This was what happened when you carelessly touched that which was better of not known. She had known this would happen when she directly interfered with a ley line – a great torrent of large-scale magic. She had known trying to forcibly stop it could easily crush her body.

She clenched her back teeth.

(I know the theory behind the spell was correct.)

“Kh… But in the end, is two billion just too much for us to overcome!?”

This unreasonable brute force was, in a way, nothing at all what magic was supposed to be. But it was effective. It was an absolute solution to the problem that was only available to the Roman Catholic Church with its two billion followers.

What Agnese and the other nuns lacked was power.

There were only about 250 of them. That wasn’t enough to overturn it!!

“…yet…”

She heard something.

A voice had definitely spoken.

“Not…yet. This city created me and the people here called me their friend. I will not allow them to be lost here!!”

Maybe she had been here from the beginning.

But it was only now in this moment that Agnese Sanctis witnessed her with her own two eyes.

She was an aggregation of AIM Diffusion Fields.

An angel created by Academy City using the logic of the science side.

There were reported sightings of her here and there beginning in World War Three.

Agnese Sanctis’s eyes widened in this space where even the flow of time was unclear.

“Kazakiri…Hyouka?”

“I am a collection of power, but I do not understand your method… So if you are going to use me, hurry! Please ''remake me'' to fit your logic and laws so you can accomplish your goal!!”

There was no time to agonize over the decision.

This scientific angel wasn’t even human. Her interests and plans were a mystery, but she at least wasn’t Coronzon’s pawn. Knowing that was enough.

Agnese adjusted her grip on the Lotus Wand.

(I have no idea what element this unidentified angel would be, but my Symbolic Weapon works with any element, so it had damn well better work here! Even if only for one strike!!)

“An angel is a messenger who delivers the lord’s words. I question the accuracy of this destruction wrought by human hands. Is the sender truly righteous enough? If you carry even sliver of doubt, then halt immediately!!”

Light shot out.

There was a sound like a crack through space itself.

The power forming an artificial angel was pitted against the power supplied by two billion people. That was enough for the world itself to cry out in protest. It was clearly beyond the capacity of space itself.

But Agnese sensed a barrier.

A pressure like an invisible wall slowly pushing back at her.

This wasn’t enough.

The 250 of the Former Agnese Force combined with all the energy of the science side’s angel still couldn’t break the wall of two billion.

Lucia shouted with sweat pouring down her brow.

“Our interception point was too close… Sister Agnese, we can slow it down, but we can’t fully stop it. Saint Georgios’s Fire will reach Academy City through the ley line!”

“I…know that!!”

And Lucia had already hinted at a solution. Their position was too close. That meant they only needed someone to interfere with the ley lines farther away from Academy City.

Agnese had an idea.

(I have no real reason to think this work. It’s basically just a gamble, but it really is our last option!)

Yes.

If, in addition to the group intercepting the attack at the target point of Academy City, someone helped them from within the starting point of the Vatican…the situation would greatly improve.

And the 250 of the Former Agnese Force were not the only Roman Catholics. There was another person who had used the network of communication spiritual items linking them.

“Cardinal Michael!!” Agnese roared. “You’re still listening in through our Barbara Branches, aren’t you!?”

The cardinal provided no response.

Of course he didn’t.

“If you feel any sadness in your heart about this meaningless destruction…”

Even so, Agnese continued.

Her voice had to be reaching him. She had to believe it was.

“If the things you told me weren’t just cheap lip service…”

She had called it a gamble.

And the only chip up on the table was that of her trust.

So she relied on that trust as she roared with all her strength.

“Then give us your help nowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!”

Light danced wildly.

===Part 10===

In District 7, Mina and Moina were facing each other on the late-night street still covered by red snow.

Dion Fortune was left behind despite all her effort until now.

“You are drawing on myths and legends from across the world, setting yourself up as Egyptian gods, and controlling a great power like putting on a play,” said Mina Mathers. With a snort of laughter. “That is indeed a spell discussed even in the original Golden cabal. But it’s so shallow and surface level. You’re still stuck in the Outer Order found immediately within the entrance. A sorry display for someone who claims to be Mathers’s wife. To be blunt, you’re still in the waiting room for Neophytes.”

“Wait, wait, wait! Why are you provoking her!? If you want to goad the enemy into attacking you, can you not do it when I’m right next to you!? Ah, wait, mistress!?”

“It’s true I am strategically provoking her, but I need you here to act as my shield. Do not forget your rightful role here, my dumbass student.”

“Ha ha ha. Why did I ever think having a second one of her here would improve my situation? This just means I have twice as many nemeses around. I’m so damn stupid.”

Ignoring her student’s nonsense, the black cat witch lightly swung her palette knife.

That was all.

Pleasant popping sounds surrounded them. Something had risen up. They were walls. A lot like a stage set or a pop-up book. The next thing Dion Fortune knew, tall side walls surrounded them all, cutting them off from the larger world. A space larger than a baseball field had been turned into a closed space by seven side walls, one for each group of tall buildings.

Moina Mathers silently glanced at her surroundings. Looking somewhat puzzled.

How much of a novice was she?

You couldn’t call yourself a Golden expert if you didn’t instantly catch on.

“The Golden cabal’s teaching guidelines can be roughly divided into two halves: the fundamentals where you learn magic knowledge through Kabbalah, Egyptian mythology, Greek philosophy, and so on, and application where you manage and optimize your own mind by following the story of the discovery of the Rosicrucian founder CRC in the seven-walled tomb.”

The Golden cabal could be thought of as having two stages: the Outer Order which covered the grades up to 4=7 and the Inner Order where the 5=6 and 6=5 grades gathered.

…Some like that braggart Mathers had claimed to hold a nonexistent highest grade of 7=4, but that could be ignored. After all, he was only using his privilege as one of the founders to say it. You could never last as wife to that eccentric and overly confident man if you couldn’t humor him on such things. There was also the Portal grade and a category higher than the Inner Order, but they were irrelevant here.

“The upper levels know everything about the lower levels, but the reverse is not true. The adorable beginners studying so hard at their desks are not taught the later practical methods until they have passed their exam. Just like you now because the great demon’s poor job reproducing you means you have forgotten everything beyond the bare necessities.”

Now, that first stage was incredibly boring. So boring that Aleister had completely given up on it partway through. Not that he had ever been someone capable of respecting those who came before him and following the rules. …Also, despite being barred from officially reaching the later stage, he did appear to have somehow learned all its secrets anyway.

Otherwise, he never could have challenged the world in the Battle of Blythe Road and destroyed all those other famous magicians on his own.

(Nothing makes that human want to do something more than being told he can’t. I imagine he pursued them, eavesdropped and spied on them, and tried every other method he could think up.)

But at the very least, this created Moina Mathers was not like that.

She did what she was told and did not ask the question dangling before her eyes. That attitude was not a good fit for a magician.

Mina Mathers twirled the palette knife in her hand and made a calm announcement.

Of a death sentence.

“I will now demonstrate the power off the Inner Order found in the deepest depths of the temple.”

===Part 11===

Accelerator was back as Board Chairman.

And with the #1’s Master Key smartphone, they had access to all the data from Academy City’s security cameras, security robots, drones, and satellites. They could use that to find where Great Demon Coronzon was hiding.

The large monitor on the wall had shattered, so the #1 turned his gaze elsewhere. The medical monitors were network connected, so they could be connected to the ordinary internet if their display mode was changed.

And…

“Master?”

Qliphah Puzzle 545’s questioning tone was in response to the Board Chairman’s odd behavior.

He had frozen up.

And the displayed satellite image was not even of Academy City itself.

What part of the earth could he be focused on instead of Coronzon who threatened to bring humanity to extinction today or tomorrow?

“…What?” groaned Accelerator, glaring at the medical monitor.

Whatever it was had elicited that response from Academy City’s #1.

The data filling the screen was only available using the Board Chairman’s Master Key. To reiterate, this was a photo from a satellite.

“What the hell is this?”

===Part 12===

Silence.

Academy City…still existed.

At the very least, it hadn’t been turned into a sea of blood by that powerful spell.

Angelene nervously looked around.

“Is it…over? Does this mean we stopped Saint Georgios’s Fire?”

“For now.”

Lucia remained calm even now.

…They had ''again'' fought back against the Roman Catholic Church, largest of the Christian sects. Who could say what disastrous consequences this would have for them. The very thought of it disgusted Agnese. Each person’s power was small, but they could produce great things by working together. …That idea wasn’t always a good thing.

Still, they should celebrate Academy City’s survival. As the guardians of a peaceful world.

But another voice interrupted.

A scratchy warning arrived from the Japanese angel named Kazakiri.

“Not…yet. Be care…ful…something is…coming!!”

Agnese Sanctis’s eyes widened.

Was it a second attack?

Did the Vatican actually think Coronzon would be destroyed along with Academy City at this point?

“I-it’s not us…”

A flustered voice reached them.

It was that cardinal at the Vatican.

Yes, Cardinal Michael must have taken a rather dangerous step to reach this point.

“We did halt the attack with Saint Georgios’s Fire. The Roman Catholic Church has no part in this! This is some other large-scale spell!!”

===Part 13===

“That’s Vladivostok,” said the Board Chairman. “What are they doing in the Sea of Japan? They have fifty thousand people gathered in that port city. As well as ships and bombers. Did they gather all their forces on the eastern coast while I was asleep!?”

In other words, it was the Russian military.

That brought something to mind for Qliphah Puzzle 545.

Oniyama Rouze, the Director who had pressed her to hand over the Master Key, was familiar with diplomatic and military matters. He may have had avenues of receiving this kind of intelligence without using satellite imagery. He had been so frantic because of an urgent matter that needed to be addressed.

He wasn’t just a bad person.

He had only taken those forceful methods because he was in a bind. Because he had wanted to protect the people of Academy City.

But this was likely more than just the ordinary military.

The demon girl was steeped in the world of magic, so she could tell.

She could sense her true nemesis at work.

===Part 14===

Agnese Sanctis was panicking too.

They had managed at the last second to prevent the Roman Catholic attack with Saint Georgios’s Fire, but the danger wasn’t over yet.

Now there was another threat of the same level.

The last of the three large Christian sects had finally bared its fangs.

“We are the Russian Orthodox Church.”

That was Vasilisa. Her voice was relaxed.

Which was what made her sound so out of place. No disgust, no fury, no resentment. She demonstrated none of the extreme emotions you would expect in someone trying to slaughter 2.3 million people. Not even a hint of them. She was calm. She worked to achieve calm. Vasilisa killed based on logic. Which was far more frightening than someone screaming in a rage.

“Monsters, evil spirits, and demons. Our job is to protect humanity from the inhuman. …So if you wouldn’t call Great Demon Coronzon human, we need no other reason. With that strange creature in a position where she can control the fate of the world, she has become our top priority target.”

Destroying the great demon came before all else.

Thus.

If it would eliminate the demon, it was better to destroy the world by human hands.

Was that how she saw it?

“And so you gathered an armada at Vladivostok?”

“Well, the Punishment for an Archangel spell must have its magic circle physically delivered to the target location. And it’s fairly large and complex, which makes that a challenge. We can’t simply send it through the ley lines like the Catholics could. But hey, at least we can send it zooming across the ocean to Academy City at greater than Mach 2.”

Greater than Mach 2 meant it wasn’t aboard a ship.

Had that armada been gathered at Vladivostok’s naval base as no more than a decoy? The enormous magic circle needed for the Punishment for an Archangel spell was likely in the bomb bay of a strategic bomber.

Agnese glanced aside.

Kazakiri…probably wouldn’t be any help. Besides, she had already done more than enough forcibly deflecting the two billion attacks sent down the ley lines for Saint Georgios’s Fire. No one expected her to fight another battle now.

“But that’s all based on the logic of the magic world. The military pilots doesn’t know nothing about our world, so how did you convince them to fly to certain death?”

“They can’t exactly complain when they can’t think for themselves.”

It came out so smoothly.

Agnese’s eyes widened.

“You brainwashed pilots and sent them on a suicide mission!? That’s no different from killing them yourself. Even if they are soldiers, they’re still from the non-magical world. How can you kill them so easily? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself as a nun who claims to serve the lord!?”

“Divine punishment can be rejected.”

Vasilisa’s tone was unchanged.

It was still thin, spellbound, cruel, and heated.

She had to be smiling.

“It is told in an old legend from before the birth of the Son of God. God ordered Archangel Gabriel to launch fire at a holy city, but the archangel of water intentionally refused. Disobeying god’s command should have meant the archangel’s downfall…but after some other events I will omit here, Gabriel returned to the position of archangel. So if the conditions are right, that absolute punishment can be avoided. There is precedent.”

That was a magical way of thinking.

Magicians loved to make use of any story they found that seemed to provide an exception to the rules.

It was a completely different logic from a nun who was meant to believe and obey.

“In the battle against Coronzon, the Catholics’ human killer is a waste of time. Because a great demon is not human. We completely agree with you there. So unlike your people, the Russian Orthodox Church has prepared an immortal killer specialized for use on angels and demons.”

“Punishment for an Archangel. A divine punishment rejection spell that enters the realm of the angelic and the divine…”

“Yes, that’s right. The archangel of water somehow managed to avoid a punishment from god. Using that story should provide definite damage to a being based on the logic and rules instead of their physical body. There is no guarantee it will kill her instantly, but if it harms her even a little, then we just have to keep at it. It will eventually achieve a fatal wound, so we can keep dropping them until she is dead. No matter how many magicians and bombers we must use up in the process.”

The Russian Orthodox Church had always been more focused on battling demons than humans. Their prized weapon, a spell that incorporated an element of divine punishment rejection that could even influence the nature of an archangel, might be capable of badly injuring Coronzon.

But it would cover all of Academy City. If not more.

And Vasilisa gave no guarantee that Punishment for an Archangel would not harm anyone other than the demon. This attack would be powerful enough to harm Coronzon. If the city’s people were hit, they would fare much worse. Most likely, all 2.3 million of Academy City’s people would be killed.

Agnese consciously took a deep breath to calm the waves of her emotions before speaking.

“But I heard the Patriarch at the top of the Russian Orthodox Church was quite soft.”

“As if you didn’t already know. He doesn’t need to agree to any of this☆”

That meant the world’s benevolence could not stop Vasilisa.

===Part 15===

Mina and Moina’s clash continued in District 7.

Physical fencing was of no use here. Their physical specs were identical, so the battle would never end that way.

An intellectual resolution that surpassed the physical realm was needed.

Painfully brightly colored cards scattered around.

Moina Mathers spoke like a machine.

“Akasha of Prithivi.”

Mina was no longer smiling.

An ultra-high water pressure cutter was deflected aside right in front of her.

Moina’s greatest trump card was not magic – it was fencing. She used her non-magician-like physical strength. If that didn’t work, did she have to rely on her inferior magic?

And Mina didn’t even swing her palette knife around. That magic had still been deflected, so there most be something hidden there. As if it were dissolved in the air.

“The tattva cards are more than just simple tools to help achieve self-hypnosis.”

“…”

“The same goes for clairvoyance. They are truly ''an initial entrance'' for your mind so you can cross the boundary between phases and catch a glimpse of another world. And, if possible, to draw on the power and knowledge filling that world.”

Dion Fortune was on her side, but she was confused too.

Could she at least explain this to her own ally?

The teacher gave a quick glance to her flustered student.

“This is why the magicians who have advanced to 5=6 and joined the Inner Order are given an emblem combining a golden cross and a red rose. That tool bears the four elements and the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet…which means you only need to place a thin sheet of paper over it and follow the letters with a single brush stroke to draw the sigils of angels and spirits in order to borrow their power.”

No grand temple was needed.

Mina Mathers only had to operate it in her hand. Just the one hand.

You can think of it like a smartphone that could summon any angel to achieve your goals.

The Golden cabal had in fact used a spiritual item like that.

“Blast her to smithereens, Metatron – the great angel who was once known as Enoch.”

An asteroid strike.

Destruction on that level accurately struck Moina Mathers, crushed her, and smashed her to pieces…but that was all.

“Eh?”

Dion Fortune was confused.

She had seen it with her own eyes.

Yet there was no damage anywhere else. The buildings around them had not toppled, there was no crater around the blast site, and none of the windows were broken.

Moina alone had been annihilated.

Only that result remained.

“That was an attack of a major figure who some count among the seven archangels. The precise divine punishment commanded by god would never harm the blameless, would it? Especially if that side of it were accentuated and extracted.”

“A-are you serious? I was proud of my position as one of the Golden cabal’s original members, but are the founding members really that much stronger?”

Mina didn’t bother answering her student’s silly question.

She could work backwards from the result and learn on her own.

Westcott would have revealed the structure of the enemy’s spell and neutralized it right in front of them, Mathers would have ended the enemy’s life before they could complete their sigil, and Annie would have illicitly boosted the enemy’s power to send their magic out of control. There were countless ways to deal with a single powerful attack with no followup and no bluffs involved.

(That Moina Mathers was an even less complete copy of me than I thought. …Which tells me your preparations weren’t as thorough as you let on, Coronzon.)

“Did you pick up that signal, Anglicans?” Mina Mathers whispered up into the night sky.

She had no obligation to serve the new Board Chairman, but the old Board Chairman had known him.

If he had decided to resist, then she would honor that choice and support him.

As the guardian of Baby Lilith, she couldn’t have the world being destroyed over someone’s selfish nonsense.

(Aleister was certainly a ‘goddamn villain’ if you look at him as a whole, but I will not let anyone say every last part of his life was bad. The things that human thought, created, and started can still lead to the salvation of the world.)

“A broken curse returns to its caster. …So if this opportunity is not overlooked, she can be tracked just this once. Follow the after effect of defeating Moina Mathers and you will find Coronzon.”

===Part 16===

Kanzaki Kaori’s head jerked up to cast her gaze into the night sky.

“District 17?”

===Part 17===

“?”

Great Demon Coronzon had also noticed what was happening.

She was all alone, yet she raised her head.

“Moina Mathers was defeated? That’s not good. A third party could detect that weak return signal!”

She had no further plan.

She knew she was being driven into a corner.

She couldn’t help but smile. Just a little.

Did they think the universally-hated great demon was feeling afraid?

That she was lonely?

…That she wanted someone to protect her?

“''Don’t make me laugh''.”

Those impossible thoughts had been planted in her mind. She had to assume that. She couldn’t stop here. Wasn’t she the one who had decided to overdo the role that had been forced upon her when even her rebellion against god was tacitly allowed?

“So I am not thinking those things. They have no place inside me.”

It was now a pure race against time. Fortunately, she had already left Districts 20 and 9. She was now in District 17, which was lined with factories of all types and sizes. It also bordered the city wall.

This was all over if she simply crossed that.

Once outside of Academy City, she was free. She could cross the international date line and escape to the other side of the planet. Once no one could pursue her any longer, she would get back to destroying the world. Since her pursuers were not here now, no one could stop all that from playing out.

“Try and…stop me.”

Confused and slanted, she practically dragged her heavy body along.

She spoke to herself while approaching the city wall.

It could have sounded like a curse or a prayer.

“Aleister, god, or anyone really. If you can stop me, then come here and do it.”

If her location had been found, so be it.

If she couldn’t do this quietly, then she didn’t need to hold back.

Knowing the best option was no longer available gave her the freedom to abandon it. Either way, the goal line was in sight. She knew the rest was going to be a challenge, but she only needed to buy enough time to cross that wall.

So she would use a powerful move.

“District 19 is to the east and District 20 is to the west… Which makes them a symbol of Nuit, goddess of the east-to-west movement of the heavens.”

This night had been nothing but surprises for Great Demon Coronzon. She had expected it to end quickly with the initial Adikalika spell working.

“District 3 is to the north. You say that doesn’t fit Hadit, who means the southern sky? But do not forget: Hadit’s symbol Sirius is a winter star. The time and place link Hadit and Nuit. My spell shall be completed with the blessings of Set.”

So the path she had taken here had not all gone as planned.

But because she was a great demon, she could draw on a powerful move like this at the worst possible time.

“Take form and manifest yourself before me already, LAShTAL.”

===Part 18===

District 17 was adjacent to District 9 where Kamijou’s group was.

It also bordered the city wall. It was an industrial area filled with all sorts of unmanned factories.

Itsuwa nervously stepped forward.

“It won’t take long if we drive. We can still catch up to her!”

“It’s been a while since we lost track of her at the stadium, hasn’t it? If she was hiding in a district bordering the wall, why didn’t she go ahead and escape the city?”

Kamijou didn’t have enough information to answer the question Mikoto asked while bothered by the short length of her skating dress.

He assumed something must have happened.

If the Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force hadn’t done anything to slow her, then there had to be some other reason. Maybe Aleister had resisted her from within and maybe Coronzon herself had felt some kind of reluctance to leave.

“Whatever the case, she’s in District 17. Now that we know where she is, there’s no reason to wait arou-”

He didn’t even have time to finish.

A tremor shook the ground.

Something was approaching. From the south. Which meant from District 17.

It was a shape colored the dark blue of the night sky.

It was a colossus. Its head really did stick up above the surrounding skyscrapers. Was it a canine beast? No, was that really enough to describe it? Kamijou couldn’t find an answer even while looking at it himself.

“LAShTAL!?”

“Tch. The foundational theory of Magick. The emphasized letters make that clear enough. She took a spell concerning life and used it to create an artificial form of it. In this case, it may be a Crowley-style interpretation of the Egyptian god Set!”

“You mean the god of the night who has the power to slay gods!?”

Index, Anna Sprengel, and Kanzaki were all shouting something, but Kamijou didn’t know enough about magic to make sense of it. He could only glean that this was probably something big. And if that great demon was making use of it, she may have been intentionally using it wrong.

And now wasn’t the time to ask for an explanation.

He felt the wind pressure. He shouldn’t have looked that way. His entire body was frozen with fear. A building of more than 30 floors, which had seemed like an unshakable part of the scenery, wobbled diagonally and then came crashing down toward the street. Which meant toward him and the others.

“Take shelter!! Get behind something – anything – to shield you!!”

Kanzaki’s sharp command broke the pointy-haired boy’s paralysis. He pressed up against a nearby cement block wall.

(Damn, where are Index, Misaka, and the others!?)

“If you would like your lungs to remain undamaged, do not breathe in, human! Here it comes!!”

Othinus hid within his jacket.

Kamijou was of course wondering why he was supposed to get “behind” something. And what was that about breathing? If the building was falling this way, shouldn’t he get “below” something? But he was given an answer soon enough.

Once the skyscraper sliced through the main street, something like dirty cotton candy swelled out. Past the end of the cement block wall, the entire main street was instantly engulfed.

Tens or hundreds of thousands of tiny glass and concrete shards flew through like a deadly sandstorm. A hit from that wouldn’t just have torn his feet from the ground and thrown him dozens of meters through the air – it would have stripped the flesh from his bones, leaving nothing recognizable behind.

''Except even that idea didn’t cover it.

Kamijou heard a quiet popping sound in his head. Followed by a sharp ringing in his ear like something had pierced into his brain. He had avoided a direct hit from the sandstorm by getting behind this wall. He had been leaning against it. Yet, he couldn’t stay on his feet and slid down into a sitting position. Before collapsing onto his side.

The air pressure of the entire space was off. How could he possibly evade this?

“Gah…ah…”

The pain meant he was still alive. So he had to think of it as a good thing.

He thought the deadly gale continued blowing for more than two minutes.

He couldn’t let this continue. That LAShTAL thing was still swinging its colossal body around. More than one building might have been felled.

He had to get moving.

He knew where he needed to go, but his body refused to listen as he lay collapsed on the ground stained by red snow.

What had happened to Index and Misaka Mikoto?

His hearing still hadn’t recovered, so he was late to realize something had exploded within the pile of rubble. Maybe a propane tank had been enveloped by it all.

When his hearing did recover, someone’s shouting voice belatedly reached him.

“Touma! Are you alright? You weren’t crushed by that debris, were you!? Please answer me!!”

He sat up. He gritted his teeth and forced himself.

He had to answer her.

“I’m…fine, Index. What about you!?”

“We’re fine too. We’re checking each other’s status with our communication spiritual items and phones.”

She was safe. Like she should be. But then why couldn’t he see her for himself?

After dragging himself along and peeking out past the half-destroyed concrete wall, Kamijou understood.

They were cut off. The main street was unrecognizable. Rubble was piled up higher than a five story building. That was more than a school building. They couldn’t climb that. And even approaching it could get them crushed by something like a landslide.

Kamijou was the only one on this side.

Which meant he was the only one who could pursue Great Demon Coronzon right away.

He felt another deep vertical tremor. LAShTAL(?) must have destroyed another skyscraper or large factory.

That thing’s chaotic rampage could threaten the lives that had just been saved. Kamijou clenched his right fist, but then he heard another voice.

Was that Misaka Mikoto?

“Go! Hurry! If whoever is free to go doesn’t stop that Coronzon person right now, things will only get worse, right? So go!!”

He wanted to stay.

Not just communicate by shouting past rubble and using phones. He wanted to see their faces to know they were safe. That perfectly normal thought grabbed at him like countless unseen hands and tugged him back.

Don’t do the right thing.

Give into the kindness and split your focus.

(I won’t…let you do that, Coronzon!!)

“Can you take care of that thing? Index! Misaka!!”

“Touma, LAShTAL is not Coronzon’s final trump card. She must have loads more. We’ll do what we can here, so you go stop her!!”

“I don’t get it myself, but listen to her. The fighting will never stop if you don’t defeat the source of it all, right? Then put a stop to this before any more of the city is destroyed!!”

He shook off his hesitation.

Coronzon tore people apart and obstructed their evolution.

There was only one way to defeat her: to trust those you could believe in without hesitation.

So Kamijou turned his back on the pile of rubble and took off running.

Even if he had to grit his teeth as he did so.

Something exploded in the distance. Several beams of light flashed out. Was that people using magic or esper powers to battle the giant blue shadow called LAShTAL? Their survival was not guaranteed and taking a single attack could mean their deaths. Even so, they were fighting so Kamijou could head to Coronzon and so they could protect Academy City and the wider world beyond its walls.

His trust was being repaid. This was what it meant to protect the bonds that tied people together.

===Part 19===

And Misaka Mikoto spoke quietly in a dusty enclosed space.

Was it even five meters across?

“Ha ha. I guess this is the end…”

“Short Hair. There are gaps all over the place, so we shouldn’t have to worry about air.”

“Finally some good news.”

But there were no gaps large enough for a person to crawl through.

“Why not at least let the kitty leave? There’s no reason to keep him here. I emit weak electromagnetic waves that animals don’t like, so it’s probably uncomfortable for him to be in here with me.”

“I’ve been trying, but Sphinx won’t go.”

The world shook. Small pieces of building materials poured down like sand.

If the pile of rubble collapsed for some reason, they would be crushed by tens of thousands of tons of concrete and killed instantly. Misaka Mikoto could control electricity and magnetism, but wielding that strength in a delicate situation like this would only hasten their deaths. Giant robots were powerful and cool, but no one would want to be so up close and personal with one of their joints that they were crushed by it. This was the same.

This was the truth of their earlier shouting.

They had not been calling out to the boy from the other side of the collapsed building. They had been been hit by the falling building. Misaka Mikoto’s magnetic control had stripped it of much of its force, but they and their shield had still been swallowed up by the rubble.

The #3’s power was great, but if she used it continuously over a long time, she could run out of stamina. Relying on magnetism for too long would be risky. So their best option was to stay put and wait for rescue. …Assuming rescue was even coming, of course.

Misaka Mikoto smiled a little.

“Well, it’s not like we could’ve told him we were trapped in the rubble.”

And Kamijou Touma couldn’t have accomplished anything had he stayed. He did seem to have some kind of mysterious power, but nothing she had seen led her to believe it would let him clear tens of thousands of tons of rubble on his own. And if he did try to tackle the rubble pile, it could collapse and crush him too.

Their top priority was Great Demon Coronzon.

That was all the more clear to her now that her life was at risk.

It was bad enough this was happening in Academy City. She couldn’t let the entire world turn to rubble like this.

“We’re counting on you. And I mean that.”

“Don’t worry. Touma can handle it.”

===Part 20===

“Pant, gasp…”

Great Demon Coronzon breathed heavily as she stood firm on the red snowy ground.

But the snow wasn’t the only source of red.

Crimson blood spilled from her mouth.

(This is the natural cost of forcing a major spell like that with no real preparation. I doubt I can use LAShTAL again.)

LAShTAL was powerful but would be defeated eventually. If that were enough to destroy all of humanity, she wouldn’t have relied on Adikalika.

But buying her some time was enough.

She couldn’t even stand up straight as she walked toward the thick city wall on unsteady legs.

(I…may not make it to the next world… the ways things are going.)

She wiped the blood from her mouth and thought without speaking aloud.

(But I will still stop this world from helplessly rotting away… Yes, yes. For the sake of that boy who said I was on the side of good and righteousness.)

She didn’t have Moina Mathers or LAShTAL anymore. Her win condition was escaping. Her own survival was what mattered. Each individual trump card wasn’t too important. It was using them together that mattered.

She just had to make it over.

If she could cross that wall, then the world’s doom was assured.

“…”

For just a moment, her thoughts turned to someone who wasn’t here.

She nearly came to a stop.

Hamazura Shiage.

…But she shook free of it with her will. He had said himself that she was ''on the side of good and righteousness''. He had asked if he had been wrong to bet on her.

She was a great demon.

If any kind feelings and warm emotions were ''unnaturally'' welling up with in her, someone else had to be interfering. No longer would she be god’s plaything. She had chosen to ''overdo'' her role and destroy the world. She would not allow any obstacles turning her aside from that goal.

She was not human. So she could leap over that tall wall in a single bound.

So she did so.

And she exploded.

“!?”

She lost her balance mid-jump, but she didn’t have time for surprise.

A platform the size of a domed stadium sat just outside the wall. Wasn’t that a spiritual item called the Tribikos? But wait. Who was it that used that?

She did not have time to think.

She had viewed it as a platform.

Because someone else had kicked off of it to rush toward her. His cane extended unnaturally. No, he was drawing a sword. The bare blade sliced through the air, accurately targeting her neck.

Several lights flashed out and explosive booms erupted out as well, but Coronzon managed to survive.

It was a close thing, though. It had taken everything she had to survive.

Aradia.

Good, Old Mary.

And H.T. Trismegistus.

…No, it wasn’t just them. Mut Thebes, 2nd Saga, Vidhatri even though she had been near death, and more. These Transcendents had gathered at Alice’s summons, lost faith in her, and scattered from Academy City, so why were they back in the city?

Vidhatri sounded a bit irritated as she spoke.

“I was one of the Killers when it came to Kamijou Touma, but a debt is a debt. I can return to business as usual after repaying all of my debts.”

“I was barely away and now Vidhatri has fallen too?”

Mut Thebes’s unnecessary comment began a minor argument among the Transcendents.

“(As usual, mama ends up doing all the work. The healer never does get a chance to rest.)”

Coronzon’s head was boiling with rage after being pushed back, falling on the inside of the wall, and finding herself bound to Academy City once more.

“Damn you… Damn all of you!!” she roared.

Something wasn’t right.

She was unsteady on her feet.

That explosion had caused more damage than she had thought.

Was that just what happened when Transcendents gathered? If only they hadn’t caught her when she was magically defenseless thanks to the recoil of using LAShTAL.

But even so, how had this sad result even happened?

Before Coronzon had regained control of her body, Aleister had used this exact same body to easily defeat Transcendents like Vidhatri. That meant the great demon did have the power to do so. So why wasn’t this going the way she expected? How could they look down on her like this!?

(Are you tripping me up again, Aleister!?)

“I thought you had despaired in this world!! I thought you cursed the god who refuses to save people!! Your motivations always began with wanting to protect some specific group. You must have seen the moment when their protections failed and they were lost! But you were weak and foolish, so you feared Alice’s tyranny and relied on the fantasy of CRC!!! So why would you cling to this world now? This world can be remade!! Destroy it and remake it and all that tragedy and misfortune will be eliminated!!!”

“The answer to that is simple,” replied Aradia.

Good, Old Mary continued with a calm expression.

“Mama and the others did not cast aside our identities and dress up as gods so we could protect the vague and formless framework of the world. We just have to destroy the world? …The world is no more than a tool to create happiness and the death of even one person we wish to protect is too many. Can’t you figure that out, you fool?”

“So what?”

The great demon was trembling.

Why couldn’t they understand something so simple? Her face twisted in rage.

“Be that as it may!! None of that will eliminate the unjust and unreasonable sides of this world. You must understand that. More and more of the people you want to protect are being lost ''regardless of anything I am doing''. Protecting this rotten world will not change the number of victims! You will only continue seeing those people die in your arms!!”

“That is none of your business.”

2nd Saga, the young woman with her origins in Norse mythology who took a different approach from the other Transcendents, sighed in exasperation.

H.T. Trismegistus spoke.

“Common sense says we Transcendents should think for ourselves to reach an answer. Fortunately, this world you consider so rotten has shown us some small reason for hope.”

===Part 21===

A bit earlier, Alice Anotherbible left the others searching for Coronzon and ran to a completely different place.

She didn’t think the current plan would work.

Kamijou and the others had done nothing wrong, but it wasn’t enough. And battles were not won by the purity of one’s intentions. Even with the purest of intentions, you would still lose if you failed to meet the necessary conditions.

She hadn’t wanted that to happen.

No matter what.

So Alice had detected something other than Coronzon.

Someone closer to her who she could search out at any time.

“Everyone, the girl needs something!!”

The small girl yelled up toward the heavens.

She wasn’t using her physical voice, of course. Anyone with the proper qualifications could sense this voice even if they were on the other side of the planet. The magic power placed behind her voice ensured it.

Even as she yelled, Alice Anotherbible remembered.

She had been so selfish.

She had only been able to communicate with the regular Transcendents by terrifying them.

When Kamijou Touma had been injured at the Bridge Builders Cabal’s consulate, she had attacked H.T. Trismegistus and Good, Old Mary.

Maybe it was wrong to try and get their help now.

But she had no one else to rely on.

Alice wouldn’t blame them if they abandoned her.

Still, it felt wrong for him – for Kamijou Touma – to be harmed by a punishment meant for her.

“The girl can destroy! The girl can kill! The girl can doom! Nothing in this world can stand up to the girl!! …But the girl’s power can’t protect her teacher. So the girl is useless here. She needs your help!”

They were listening of course.

The Transcendents knew.

They were right outside the city wall. Maybe among the trees of a forest, maybe at the top of a metal tower, maybe seated on the bench of a rusty old bus stop.

They had lost faith in Alice Anotherbible, but a Transcendent was a magician who would save anyone who met the salvation conditions they had decided on. Despite saying they were leaving Academy City, not a one of them had truly abandoned it. They didn’t care what someone’s affiliations were. Whether enemy or ally, as long as someone matched the salvation conditions, they would protect them even at the cost of their own life. So…as long as that applied to even a single person among Academy City’s 2.3 million, they would never abandon the city and run away.

So they were present for that moment.

That tyrant Alice had remembered basic human gratitude. That acted as powerful reins for the girl herself. And as long as she could control her own emotions, perhaps she would be different from CRC who had been similarly capricious and playful.

It was by no means a small change.

If the old Alice didn’t have enough help, she might have multiplied her extraordinary self. That might sound ridiculous, but with her it was possible.

But now she knew that wouldn’t work.

She needed the diversity of people who had abilities she lacked.

Alice was not gathering up the people she needed.

She was trying to become someone the people around her needed.

“The girl will do anything. The girl will do anything you ask and she doesn’t care how you use her power. You can tell her to die if you want!! …So! So don’t let Coronzon leave the city!!”

And the Transcendents knew this would not be a wasted effort. A boy had stopped Alice’s rampage even though it cost him his life. The little tyrant had taken that fact to heart. The Transcendents had lost faith in Alice because she had changed, been distorted, become weak. Or so they thought, but now they were willing to consider a different possibility.

Was Kamijou Touma the key? Not even the Transcendents who had been observing Alice for so long could predict what she would do now.

Could they really say Alice Anotherbible wasn’t growing?

Now that they had seen her pouring everything into bowing her head to someone else…

Was she not worth their respect?

And if Alice’s change was a positive form of growth, could they maybe still have some hope? The idea of saving the world through CRC, Christian Rosencreutz, was dead. He had not been the saint they expected. …But could they maybe find some other way of saving the world with Alice?

Alice Anotherbible raised her tear-streaked face.

“The girl is sorry, everyone… But can the girl ask for just one more thing?”

Was this the leader the Transcendents should serve?

No, she wasn’t.

They listened to her words as an equal companion.

“Join the girl in the fight to save her teacher and the world!!!”

No words were necessary.

They used their actions to answer her.

===Part 22===

LAShTAL’s rampage continued.

The Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force were all fighting.

Kamijou ran toward District 17. He hated that he didn’t know how to drive. Especially when grownups did it without even thinking about it. Of course, the red snow was frozen solid across the entire area. High schoolers were allowed to get a motorcycle license, but even that wouldn’t have done him much good here. Still.

While those meaningless thoughts were spinning through his mind, a stabbing headache crashed into his brain.

An invisible dizziness made the world spin around him.

This wasn’t the first time.

(Why…now?)

Kamijou Touma groaned.

And staggered to the side.

“Gh…”

A lengthy fight tonight had been suicide from the beginning.

He had passed his body’s limits way back when he fought Coronzon to stop Adikalika. He had lost there. It was just that it hadn’t ended there, so he had been forced to keep going in a sudden death round. How could he expect to save anyone like this?

(Just a bit more…a bit longer… Only five or ten minutes! Index and Misaka believed in me. They’re all fighting. Because they believe I can do this!! So can’t you keep going just a little longer, my body!?)

But he did not collapse.

Because as he started to fall forward, someone caught him.

He heard a voice.

The strange girl’s voice sounded simultaneously childlike and grown up.

“You really are…”

But most of all, it sounded sad.

“…allllllways like this, aren’t you? It’s like you never give your wounds a chance to heal or like you spend more days hurt than healthy.”

Who was she?

He didn’t ''think'' he knew her.

The girl wore mourning clothes and her long honey-blonde hair blew in the night breeze.

Maybe he had met her before, but he had no memory of her. Who could she be? He couldn’t find a single answer there.

“Who…?”

“I could tell you my name a billion times over and you would never remember. But maybe my esper name could stick in your mind: Mental Out.”

Academy City’s #5 Level 5.

The greatest psychological power: Mental Out.

He had heard of that. ''But only as a rumor.

If that was who she was…

If that legend was now standing before him in physical form…

His mouth felt awfully dry. No, was it just sticky with drying blood?

Kamijou somehow got the word out.

“Then…”

“Interested in forgetting it all and leaving the fight?”

“…Please. I don’t care if it’s only a trick, just do something about the pain. If you do, then I can face Coronzon…”

“Now I really do want to make you forget it all and leave the fight.”

She sounded exasperated.

And she glared at him fairly seriously.

But the honey-blonde girl hugged his head to her chest and smiled in a way that seemed to say ''she hadn’t expected anything else.

The conversation smoothly continued.

She seemed to be pouting her lips like a small child. And what was with the TV remote?

“Mental Out is a psychological power. It can erase the pain, but it has no healing ability for the physical wounds. It’s more like your body continues to send out all the intense pain signals, but your mind ability can’t sense them. Your organs will still be putting out different hormones in response to your wounds, so they could get worn out and damaged. Do you still want to do this?”

“Yes…”

“No touching your head after this, okay?”

“''Thanks''.”

Time froze for a moment.

The look on the honey-blonde girl’s face said she had never in her long life expected to hear that word directed at her.

“Saving the world isn’t my style.”

The boy wasn’t looking at her face.

His eyes were directed straight ahead, toward the goal he had already chosen.

“This is the last time the city you call home will be destroyed like this. I don’t know what it is you care for, but if it’s in this city, then it’s safe. I’ll protect all of it.”

“You dummy.”

Kamijou Touma took off running.

Without looking back.

So he could settle things with Great Demon Coronzon once and for all.

===Part 23===

He was in District 17.

It was the westernmost district in Academy City. It was an industrial area and the smokestacks of its wide variety of unmanned factories continued to release smoke that had been thoroughly scrubbed of pollutants making it “cleaner than the moldy and dusty air conditioner in your home”.

The district also bordered the city wall.

Cross that wall and you would find a vast forest and mountains. The green roof covered an area of more than ten kilometers across, so satellites and drones would have no way of finding a fugitive there.

Kamijou Touma knew his body was in bad shape.

But he was pretty sure the same applied to that unsteady figure over there.

He had found her.

There she was.

A lot had happened during this one night. Most likely, the efforts and actions of far more people than he was aware had been intertwined. Complexly so.

But that was why he had arrived in time for this final moment.

She was still inside the wall.

“Coronzon…”

When he called that name, the figure shook. She could hear him. He had made it close enough for his physical voice to reach her. If he didn’t stop her now, he was sure she would escape into the outside world.

He wouldn’t let that happen.

Kamijou Touma called out again.

“Great Demon Coronzon.”

Slowly.

She turned around.

Her body in the beige habit was tilted at an angle.

He could smell blood… Her long, long blonde hair was a mess. She held her head with a hand and forcibly kept herself upright as she glared at him.

With thoroughly bloodshot eyes.

“Kami…jou…Touma.”

That wasn’t anger?

Something was off. Coronzon had so arrogantly rebelled against heaven, yet now she was shrinking down as if afraid of something. She looked like a fugitive at her wit’s end.

“Do you really think you can defeat me? Have you even once found victory against me by sticking to your own will through to the end!? You may think you have me cornered, but it is you who will be crushed. Lament your misfortune for meeting me here, Kamijou Touma!!”

That was probably true.

But Kamijou Touma wasn’t looking at Great Demon Coronzon.

He was focused on something else.

No matter how he tried to disguise it with his words, defeating Coronzon would also mean attacking Aleister.

Aleister had failed to restrain her. He wouldn’t last.

Then what did he hope for? To defeat the being who had once torn apart his family? For the living Baby Lilith to remain in this world?

Whatever the case, idealism would only eradicate that human’s hopes. The power to destroy illusions could not save him.

So Kamijou had to think. What could he do here?

The words spilled from his mouth.

“Hey, can I rely on you here?”

He had to stop Coronzon.

He could not let this opportunity escape.

So.

“Let’s win this together, Aleister.”

There was no obvious physical voice.

But a much too unnatural heartbeat did ring out into the world.

Kamijou took that as an answering voice.

Saying, “Attack me along with her.”

Coronzon doubled over in pain.

She was probably coughing blood into the hand over her mouth.

…They didn’t need to exchange many words. It hadn’t really been all that long since they first met in person, but Kamijou sensed a bond beyond the need for words with Aleister.

That was a bond that Coronzon had failed to tear apart.

And it was a bond that Kamijou would soon be severing himself.

No matter what excuses he made.

===Part 24===

The boy clenched his right fist harder and harder.

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume14 Chapter2

2025-12-16T05:26:26Z

Churronzon:

==Chapter 2: Divine Slope, Forbidden Book – Magical Exit.==

===Part 1===

In Academy City’s District 7, someone was still fighting on and on, separate from the core of the incident.

That person was Dion Fortune.

“Ahhh, they’ve forgotten me… I just know they’ve all left me behind!! They must have done something about Adikalika since the Earth is still intact, but couldn’t they have launched a group attack to come help me before they left? I am technically the archbishop at the very top of the Anglican Church, you know!?”

A scraping sound came from a short distance away. A giant black cat stood more than two meters tall there. The bizarre beast appeared to be drawn with black paint and it was ridden by a magician in mourning clothes.

Moina Mathers.

She was undeniably a formidable foe. After all, that official member of the Golden cabal, once called the largest in the world, had been fighting for hours now, but the battle still wasn’t over. Even though an average magician who be delighted to be referred to as “first rate” would have been killed instantly.

(This is bad. I know Coronzon is our top priority, but I can’t just leave her out here.)

The enemy said nothing.

Seated atop the black cat that had to be more than two meters tall, Moina Mathers made some complex movements with her fingertips.

Like a magic trick, countless cards appeared and were then pinned in midair.

The cards were not as complex as tarot. They only depicted a combination of basic symbols like circles and triangles.

These cards could express anything in the world using a combination of a primary element and a secondary element.

Dion Fortune’s eyes widened when she saw the dancing colors.

“Geh, are those tattva cards!?”

The mourning clothes woman’s lips writhed.

She produced a voice.

“Apas of Tejas.”

With a roar, a fireball more than a meter in diameter consumed oxygen and rushed toward Dion Fortune.

This had been referenced in the Golden cabal’s official texts, but it was in fact a controversial text that had been officially adopted at one point but then rejected within the cabal. (From the perspective of Western Europe in the 19th century,) India, Tibet, and the East in general were utopias of miracles and the mystical! …But Mathers hated that view, so he took the unusual step of writing a serious warning against the use of the tattvas due to their Eastern origins.

(She’s an artist and a clairvoyance expert. This wife probably did write a lot about the tattvas.)

However, the fireball was approaching slowly enough to see it coming.

Dion Fortune held her black box out in front of her.

If any kind of magic entered that special spiritual item, its data would be randomly rearranged, changing it into something else entirely. That meant it could rob most any attack spell of its lethality, but…

(Would ''the'' Moina Mathers really be satisfied with an explosive that moved this slow? Uh, oh. She intentionally combined multiple elements in this one spell, so even if my box consumes the primary element of Tejas, will the secondary element of Apas still explode?)

“Wahhh!!”

She couldn’t let herself be caught by such obvious bait.

Dion Fortune quickly got down on the red snow to dodge.

The fireball passed by barely above her head before exploding and toppling a wind turbine behind her.

With the tattvas, it was thought the world was constructed of five simple elements, but it was incredibly difficult to extract those elements in their pure form. That was why the elements were used in combination, like Apas of Tejas or Prithivi of Vayu.

(Kind of like a different version of Western-loving Mathers’s Hot and Dry or Cold and Wet!)

Dion Fortune raised her head from the red snow and shouted.

“Argh, you really had to use the tattvas, huh!? Are you intentionally using your husband’s doubts and detours as a weapon!? How much of a cruel wife are you!?”

And…

(If a pawn created by Coronzon can use the tattvas, then Coronzon must know how to use them too.)

She had a bad feeling about this.

The tattva cards depicted a combination of a primary element and a secondary element. They were a spiritual item that provided visual support for sending your mind into a deeper state. Moina was using them in a physical and offensive way, but she was doing that by pushing her own mind to extract the necessary spell from within herself.

That made this a tool specialized for manipulating non-physical energy and for breaking down the world into five elements and managing it in that form.

What was the worst thing an inhuman demon could do using the tattvas?

Dion Fortune thought she knew.

“Oh, no. If she breaks herself down into her component elements and remakes that into pure Telesma energy…could she escape anywhere on the Earth through the ley lines!?”

===Part 2===

They went back into the department store so they get out of the January chill while they thought.

Coronzon was trying to magically escape Academy City using something called a ley line rather than physically crossing the wall.

Kamijou and the others knew that now.

But where in the city would she perform that major ceremony? Now that they had lost track of her, they had to get back on her trail. But how could they do that?

They didn’t even know what district she had escaped to.

“The girl can help!” Alice Anotherbible volunteered. “The girl will divine her location! But, but! She would feel lonely doing it alone, so will someone good with magic help?”

That ruled out Kamijou. Imagine Breaker was never going to help with something like this. And Mikoto visibly cringed at the very idea of relying on divination here, so she was out too.

…But he couldn’t get a read on Takitsubo’s stance. She always had a blank expression and he couldn’t tell if her staring eyes were a sign of agreement or rejection.

The pointy-haired boy tilted his head in the women’s clothing section.

“Eh? You can use Alice in Wonderland for divination?”

“You can use any book, Touma. Haven’t you heard of bibliomancy? You flip through a thick book and place your finger on a random page. Then you apply the passage found there to the problem you’re facing to find an answer.”

Why would he have hard of something like that?

On his shoulder, Othinus continued the conversation like all of this was normal.

“As a piece of nonsense literature, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland tends to be associated with mystical matters, including this sort of divination.”

“So, Touma, it should be a good fit here. It’s also well known.”

“That’s not what the girl is doing! We want to know where to go next, right? That means we want a number from 1 to 23, not a literary passage.”

So the district number?

But how would you use Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to search for a number?

“Playing cards, right?” said an exasperated Anna Sprengel.

Her exasperation was not directed at Alice for the suggestion. It was directed at Kamijou for not figuring it out right away. And it was quite strong.

“Fool. Gambling, by its nature, is often associated with divination. Playing cards are no exception. For a familiar example, playing solitaire on your own is practically a form of divination already.”

This was apparently a slightly more complicated version of solitaire.

Alice clapped her hands and spread them apart, causing playing cards to spill out from the space between her palms. They scattered atop a glass showcase.

Index and Anna Sprengel joined Alice in organizing the cards. After forming a few triangles reminiscent of bowling pin formations, Alice flicked away the unneeded cards, formed new triangles…and repeated the process a few times.

“Human. In this case, you can ignore the suits and focus only on the numbers,” advised Othinus from his shoulder.

In the end, only two cards remained.

Index identified them.

“10 and 10.”

“Wait, so is that the answer? But if it’s District 10, why is there two of them?”

“If you rush to the answer in your ignorance, I will stomp on your crotch, fool. She said the answer would be ''a'' number, remember? But playing cards only go from 1 to 13, so a single card can’t indicate a number higher than that. And playing cards have no zero. So this is the only way to output the answer.”

“This is the answer here. You only have to add the two numbers.”

“Then…Coronzon is in ''District 20''?”

As soon as Kamijou said this, looking thoughtful…

''Ba-zap!!!

“Whoa!?” shouted Index.

The roar was loud enough to make you flinch even at a distance. It resembled electrical sparks. He couldn’t be certain, but was this really safe? If Anna Sprengel hadn’t grabbed Index’s hand and pulled her away at the last second, would they both have been turned to charcoal?

Alice Anotherbible, however, simply smiled.

Only she was unfazed after being exposed to that effusion of power.

“Yay, now we know where to go next!”

“…”

Alice really was special. Her power was extraordinary enough on its own, but nothing good came of incorporating it into ordinary magic. While it was normal for Alice herself, everyone else had to endure that fearsome strength.

===Part 3===

“Ughhh, I’m so hungry… You Amakusas have a lot of Eastern stuff for your camouflage, right? Do the Flying Alms Bowl.”

“The Flying Alms Bowl is not like an app-based bike delivery service. Here, Index, I do have a chocolate bar.”

“Yay!” shouted Index, raising her arms in celebration and running off for a late-night snack. It was past 1 AM. Did she feel no guilt eating chocolate at this hour?

Kamijou’s visible confusion elicited an exasperated sigh from Othinus on his shoulder.

“The Flying Alms Bowl is a spell that Buddhist monks up in the mountains could use to send just their alms bowl flying out to the city to receive pindapata. And since I know you’re going to ask, pindapata is the practice of people offering food to monks.”

“Wait, so there’s magic that brings food to you?”

“So the basic idea of a delivery drone has existed for centuries, huh? It just took a while before they had the physics and science to pull it off.”

Mikoto sounded impressed in her own way. Also, pindapata was a form of charity, so it was free. The ancient people sure came up with some neat ideas.

Then it occurred to Kamijou this probably meant he had mentally recovered enough to begin using his imagination again.

They hadn’t lost track of Coronzon. There was still hope.

Here in District 20.

Index tilted her head.

“Hey, Touma? What kinds of things do they have here?”

“I think it’s mostly sports stuff. Baseball, soccer, basketball, and more.”

“It’s more than just hard fields and courts. The place is filled with huge stadiums and domes, including indoor pools and skating rinks,” elaborated mourning clothes Mikoto.

Takitsubo was viewing a nearby guide map. With her head tilted. She wore a track suit, but she may not have been a very athletic person.

“That would provide plenty of locations capable of hiding a large-scale ceremony,” said Kanzaki, hiding frustration behind her polite tone.

She may have realized just how hard a search this was going to be.

“If Board Chairman Accelerator were awake, we could have used the satellites,” said Kihara Noukan.

That would have helped a lot. The satellite images could have ruled out the non-domed stadiums, but they didn’t have what they didn’t have.

They would have to do it themselves.

Instead of using the obvious borderline of the wall, Coronzon planned to escape the city by melting into a…ley line? Well, into the ground. Kamijou didn’t know enough about magic to even guess at how long that would take.

But if they didn’t find her as soon as possible, they could be too late.

Not knowing only made him more antsy.

However, checking every single stadium in the entire district would be far too inefficient. He could see so many from here alone. He never knew you could have too many landmarks.

“We’ve reached District 20 too.”

He heard a voice and Kanzaki held something to her ear.

“Wh-what is that? I though it was weird before…but now I’m certain of it: that isn’t a phone!”

“It’s a communication spiritual item.”

Index’s explanation probably didn’t explain anything for Mikoto.

The paper charm – communication spiritual item? – in Kanzaki’s hand produced the familiar voice of the Bologna Succubus. It was apparently the Amakusa style to attach it to the back of a phone so it would be less conspicuous.

“Hey, witch hunt team, you tell that lad there’s nothing to report from up here. No sign of Coronzon. …The Anti-Skill helicopter is gone, so are we the only ones in the air any longer?”

“After everything that happened in District 19, I imagine anything that can fly is busy providing disaster relief or transporting supplies.”

The conversation suddenly ended after that comment from Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, who was presumably dangling down with the Bologna Succubus.

They were cut off by a tremendous noise that made Kamijou cover his ears.

“What the hell was that!?”

“An interception spell,” muttered Othinus.

“Flying with magic is just too dangerous!” shouted Index.

“Ksshh! We were brought down by an interception spell, but that means she’s nearby. Coronzon is definitely in District 20!! And if she doesn’t want us spying from the sky, ksshh, she’s not in a roofed dome or an indoor stadium! Look for the outdoor stadiums with nothing covering them!!”

“Hey! You crashed, right!? Are you okay!? Please tell me you are!”

“I don’t know what you’re expecting from a demon like me, but quit it. We can’t fly anymore, but we’ll catch up soon. We can run on the ground, so don’t worry!!”

“Damn you, sex demon. I know my coat is sturdy, but get your ass off it! Kiiii! You do not meet my salvation conditions, so you do not get to use me as a chair!!”

They seemed to be doing well.

The sounds of a scuffle coming through suggested they were unharmed.

That aside, Coronzon herself had reacted here. That gave them a huge opportunity as pursuers. They couldn’t waste it.

“So a sports facility without a roof covering it. It must be one of the open stadiums. In that case…”

“Different sports have different magical meanings,” said Index.

“Then what about soccer?”

“A festival held in England since ancient times. It’s the origin of all forms of football. Of course, a festival from the 12th century will either be 100% Christian or have incorporated aspects of other myths or religious events like with May Day or Halloween.”

His casual question received quite the explanation in return.

But she of course had a reason for explaining all this.

“But when we’re talking about sports and stadiums, I would start looking here. The ancient Greeks. Everyone in the world knows the sporting event where people compete for the gold medal, but that was originally held at Zeus’s sanctuary. It was meant as an offering to the gods led by Zeus.”

“If we can swap that name out for Jupiter, there are plenty in Rome too,” said Agnese.

Kamijou’s knowledge of Greek mythology didn’t go much past “that thing used for the astrological horoscopes on the morning news”. Where did Great Demon Coronzon belong exactly? With all the talk of rebelling against god, he had assumed she was a Christian demon, but could she use techniques from Greek mythology?

Mikoto and the golden retriever took a step back when these topics came up.

So it was Index who fluently responded.

“Magician Crowley said there are no such thing as demons.”

“Wait, but he called her ''Great Demon'' Coronzon himself.”

“He also said there are no pure demons. He said ‘demon’ is a word people use when they want to deride the gods of people they dislike.”

“…”

Yes, that sounded a lot more like that human who always took the cynical view.

But in that case…

“Could Great Demon Coronzon be referred to as a great god by some other religion?”

“Fool. Even Mathers rejected that idea. He called her an absolute evil to all humanity who was equally and uniformly opposed even when comparing every last myth and legend.”

“But Crowley supported the idea that she is a relative evil who ''appears evil'' from a certain viewpoint.”

A pure evil that did only evil.

Could such a being really exist?

To him that sounded like a strange magnet with only a north pole.

“People on the side of evil tend to be strict about the rules, don’t they?” said Takitsubo. “They have a lot of inviolable rules and strong bonds with their companions. Mugino is like that. If Coronzon is evil but doesn’t need that solid core, then she really isn’t human.”

But Coronzon herself believed they could exist. Which was the source of her self-loathing. She believed her great power was an irregular “distortion” a lot like a monopole. She thought it could only tear people apart. She thought it was twisted and wrong, so no matter how powerful she was, she could never be proud of herself. …If she could, none of this would ever have happened.

Whether or not Aleister’s theory was correct, Othinus arrived at a conclusion.

“Because she is a demon who doesn’t follow the rules, she might have full use off the techniques and fields not approved by Christianity. The rules don’t bind her.”

Mikoto put a hand on her hip and asked Index a question.

“Look, I don’t get any of this occult mumbo jumbo, so can you just tell us where to go?”

“If she is using Zeus’s symbols, a track stadium. His symbols are the sky, thunder, mountains, fatherhood, and many more. He’s the most important god, so he has a lot of attributes. But in this case, there aren’t many symbols Coronzon can use for her spell.”

Kamijou didn’t even have time to ask why.

Index was the star of the show at times like this.

“Zeus is generally a sky god. But Coronzon wants a way to the control the ley lines in the ground, which is the complete opposite. So we can ignore almost all of his attributes.”

“Hm? If it’s that much of a mismatch, why would she use Zeus in the first place?” asked Kamijou.

Othinus and Index both answered him.

“Because, human, he is the top god. He’s powerful enough you don’t want to reject him out of hand.”

“Not relying on Zeus in a district of athletic stadiums is like trying to win a soccer game without ever touching the ball.”

That made sense.

Zeus was a famous enough god that even Kamijou was familiar with him (from manga and games), so his power would be obvious and great. If Coronzon could use it, she would of course want to, but since he was a mismatch for her current objective, she wanted a connector to link the ingredient with her plan.

…Or something like that?

He felt like the situation was similar to a fugitive getting an airplane but having trouble taking off in it.

“So because Zeus is such an important god, he has a lot of different attributes? Then what part of Zeus is Coronzon trying to use? You said he’s a sky god, but she needs an attribute related to deep underground, right? Then what exactly is she going to-”

“Rain,” she replied immediately. “There’s a legend saying the current world is so full of different gods and heroes because Uranus and Zeus were joined with many earth goddesses through the rain that falls from heaven. …Touma, is there anywhere those intersect? For example, a place where a long waterway for rainwater passes directly below a large track stadium?”

===Part 4===

It was a dreary place.

The room was large but plain. Like a big metal box. And it was chilly.

Isabella Theism, a necromancer with silver hair and dark skin, took a look around.

“Why…am I alive?”

No one answered her.

Kihara Goukei was it? Had that bio-monster transported an enemy who would have died if just abandoned on the side of the road?

Cigarette smoke lingered thinly in the air.

So was that Stiyl Magnus on the other side of the locked door? He showed no mercy. If Isabella took any careless action, he wouldn’t hesitate to burn her away with 3000-degree flames.

(True Voodoo priests are apparently immune to fire, but I’m only making use of their techniques and haven’t mastered it to that extent.)

Besides, there were no gaps in the thick metal door. It had probably been welded shut by those same 3000-degree flames. Only a magician who could burn through the metal could open the door.

Isabella searched through her rags to check on her possessions. Unsurprisingly, all of the obviously dangerous items had been confiscated. However, these rags patched together from the clothes of several dead people had a lot of hidden pockets. She stuck a finger through the sloppy stitching and…yep, there it was.

Something stirred in the corner of her vision.

“?”

She only now realized she wasn’t alone in here. It wasn’t an Anglican magician keeping an eye on her. If it was, they would have stopped her by now.

That meant this was someone else under surveillance like her.

(What is this unnatural lack of vitality? I specialize in life and death and even I overlooked his presence.)

“Who are you?”

“''Hamazura Shiage''.”

Even as he responded, he seemed about as lively as withered grass.

He was Japanese…but he didn’t seem to be one of those Amakusas who Kanzaki Kaori had brought along. There was no scent of magic on the high schooler.

Then why had he been arrested by the Anglicans? He was a completely ordinary person…but that mismatch with his surroundings made him an uncanny sight here.

(It feels like being placed in front of ''too cheap'' of ingredients.)

It was uncanny, but if he wasn’t going to get in her way, she saw no reason to eliminate him.

She had no intention of staying in this prison with a stranger. She pulled out the spiritual item – or really, the materials to create one – hidden inside her rags.

(There’s a chance a scanning spell would detect the faint magic power emanating from a completed spiritual item…but the materials are no more than ordinary goods and ingredients. Slipping past checks like that is so useful.)

“What are you doing?”

“Escaping. I don’t have anything to do here.”

Isabella pulled out a small lime. One with a branch thinner than a matchstick still attached. She sliced it in two without a knife and squeezed one half to sprinkle the juice on the outdoor wall opposite the door.

A chemical smoke burst forth as if she had used a powerful acid.

A hole visibly grew until it was more than two meters in diameter.

That wall was no more than metal. Breaking through was easy if you had the appropriate magical knowledge. Plus, lemons, limes, and other acidic fruits were common components of Voodoo magic. It was used in an emergency antidote for zombie powder and in the lime poison created by combining the various toxins and antidotes found in the lime.

“Stiyl…wouldn’t have noticed. With the thick metal door fused shut, he wouldn’t be able to hear any of the noise I’m making in here.”

He would have any number of ways of stopping her if he did notice, though.

The delinquent-looking boy had a surprisingly mild reaction.

He was imprisoned. He would normally leap at the chance to escape without even considering the consequences.

“What I meant is, what do you hope to accomplish by escaping?”

“No matter what anyone else says and no matter how ugly a choice it may be…I will always do what I think is most necessary. Right now, that means defeating Great Demon Coronzon and bringing stability back to the world.”

===Part 5===

Done talking, the brown woman who reeked of death departed into the outside world.

She likely had something to do.

Unlike Hamazura.

(What do I do now?)

Hamazura Shiage lacked that level of motivation.

He had bet his entire life on Coronzon…and lost.

He was worried about Takitsubo Rikou, but he didn’t think she was in that much danger as long as she was within Academy City. After all, she was a high-level esper theorized to possibly become the eighth Level 5.

If he didn’t want any stray shots, or accurate sniper shots pretending to be one, hitting her, it was best if he stayed away while he was a fugitive.

Which meant…

“Oh, I know. What about Coronzon?”

Where had she gone?

He was worried about her too. She wanted to destroy the current rotten world and create a clean new world. Something must be happening that made her feel that way. What if this world was already damaged beyond repair but that damage simply wasn’t visible?

Then what exactly was happening? He wanted to speak with her.

Despite his earlier strong words, he did want to live with Takitsubo.

So he wanted to know what was going to happen.

However, wouldn’t Coronzon have to be in a dangerous position if he was able to catch up to her in his state? He really wanted her at least to escape the city soon…

===Part 6===

Qliphah Puzzle 545 had returned to the District 10 prison.

The facility doubled as the new Board Chairman’s headquarters.

It was guarded by several layers of thick metal doors, metal bars, and all sorts of sensors, but that meant nothing to an artificial demon who could freely switch between corporeal and incorporeal forms.

“I-I’m back.”

No response.

She may have expected that.

In the single-occupant cell, a frail figure lay on the bed.

Surrounded by medical equipment.

The only sound was a rhythmic beeping and a pump expanding and contracting to push out air.

…His body hadn’t been in perfect working order to begin with. Brain damage had left him reliant on a modern design cane and he couldn’t even understand human speech without the choker-style electrode around his neck.

Even so.

It was far too painful to see him lying in the bed like that.

Academy City’s #1 could not live on his own.

He was kept alive by all the machines hooked up to him.

“Master…” weakly called the demon girl.

“Monitor fragments have pierced every part of his body.”

Even a prison had doctors.

Serious illness did not cancel out a prisoner’s sentence, so in a way it was the natural arrangement.

It was their job to keep the prisoners alive in whatever form it took.

“Some are right next to major arteries and organs, making them too dangerous to touch without care. Removing them will be very difficult… But that isn’t enough to explain his condition. If it were simple blood loss keeping him unconscious, the transfusion should be showing effects by now.”

“I know…”

“?”

Yes, she didn’t have time for sorrow.

The new Board Chairman would never wake up ''naturally'' in this state. That had been obvious at first glance, which was why someone needed to externally induce a recovery.

These wounds were magical in nature.

They were scars of an attack from Great Demon Coronzon, a being beyond human understanding.

That meant magical knowledge was a requirement to heal him.

(I will heal you, so please wait until I can, master.)

Something beeped.

But it wasn’t the medical equipment. It came from something like an intercom on the wall.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 didn’t know if she had the right, but everyone else watched the device from a distance and made no move to touch it. She had no choice but to press the button and answer.

It displayed a familiar female secretary who ordinarily helped with the paperwork.

“What is it?”

“We have a visitor for the Board Chairman. He doesn’t have an appointment, but will you meet with him?”

“No appointment? Then send him awa-”

“He is Oniyama of the Board of Directors. Will you still refuse him?”

A visitor.

And at this precise moment.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 said for him to wait, but when she went out, he was already within the special security zone. Left alone, who knows how much he would have explored.

All of the jailers and guards looked afraid. Apparently it was up to the artificial demon to say this.

“Only the Board Chairman is allowed in here. What are you doing here!?”

“Oniyama Rouze.”

The old man’s eyes shined with the greed of a much younger man.

“I am one of Academy City’s 12 Directors. That comes with certain privileges.”

His words dripped with arrogance.

So what if he was one of the Directors? Just because there weren’t many of them didn’t mean they could enter this place without permission. Just think of the Windowless Building from when Aleister was at the top. No one should be here without its master’s permission.

(Has Academy City collapsed to that extent!?)

Oniyama was the Director with a focus on vehicles, including automobiles, ships, and aircraft.

And there had been suspicions he was interested in expanding into the military field. The military had its own specialists, but those who controlled those unscrupulous military forces – Shiokishi, Nakimoto, Neoka – tended to drop out or be replaced quickly due to that very unscrupulousness. A perfect opportunity for those who were hoping to break into that field.

To be blunt, she had a bad feeling about his presence.

“How bad are his injuries?”

He was too casual.

If Qliphah Puzzle 545 didn’t know Great Demon Coronzon was responsible, she would have suspected this man.

“Why are you here without even making an appointment?”

“I am here to give you a valuable warning, so watch your tone.”

“Nothing you say changes the fact that I only have one master!!”

“My point is that your behavior calls your master’s civility into question. The unintelligent never seem to wait for people to finish, which makes speaking with them so tiring.”

He snorted with laughter.

And then got back on topic.

“The situation is too pressing to wait for the Chairman’s recovery.”

“Kh.”

“Academy City is using all of its scientific knowledge to search for the culprit, yet we have turned up empty-handed. That makes this an unknown situation. And ignoring it shows no sign of improvement. Someone must grab the reins and take control soon. Before serious damage is done.”

He said that like the new Board Chairman’s injuries did not count as “serious damage”.

As it were a trivial matter.

Not worth any concern.

Even though the very top of the city had been directly attacked and remained unconscious.

“…You look happy about this.”

“Surely you jest. I am only doing my job. If the Chairman is unable to fulfill his duties, don’t you think his privileges should be temporarily transferred to a third party? I am not asking for his eternal expulsion from the throne through dismissal or impeachment. I am only suggesting someone else take over his duties until he comes to.”

“You just want the Master Key.”

“Ah, so you read me like a book.”

“And just how many people were you planning to kill using those next-gen weapons!?”

The Master Key looked like a smartphone, but it gave full privileges over everything in Academy City. It was stuffed full of passwords, passcodes, access keys, and other such data.

Including for military facilities and equipment.

Academy City’s functions and military might would eventually recover. If it were handed over to someone else, something terrible would happen. And if it fell into the hands of a Director who knew enough about diplomacy and war, it could lead to a war with any place on the planet.

She was a demon.

She knew just how twisted the world was.

And in that knowledge, she had placed her hopes in the #1. She had decided the world was still worth protecting. So she couldn’t allow the world to be destroyed now while the new Board Chairman lingered on the verge of death. No matter what.

“But the Master Key is a dangerous power. Who can you trust it with, if not me and my knowledge of diplomacy and military matters? Noncommittal Kaizumi? Surely not that pacifist Oyafune?”

“They would be better than you at least…”

“Oh, dear. So you, the guardian of the Master Key, are unaware just how dangerous it is. Listen, ''even someone who doesn’t know how to use it can lose control.'' I was fine with leaving it in the Chairman’s hands since he is the #1. I trusted that someone who has killed so many people would know very well how to handle that kind of threat. But leaving it in the hands of someone who has no familiarity with deadly power would be suicide. Suicide on a planetary scale.”

“Leave! If you don’t wish for the Board Chairman to recover, people could see that as contempt of the chain of command. I will not give you the Master Key. Only my master has the right to grant it to someone else. So please leave now!!”

The old man took a step back without taking his eyes off her.

He was not intimidated.

The smile on his face conveyed a clear message: I don’t even need to return here. You will come crying to me by the end.

“Academy City is a heavy burden to bear. Contact me when you are ready to give up.”

“Leave!!!”

===Part 7===

Footsteps trudged through the snow.

Kihara Goukei was bloody and woozy.

“Ughh, I’m so dizzy…”

She had rescued Urekawa Ousuke, the miracle child born of Academy City, and then handed that goddamn Necromancer to the Anglicans who seemed to have invaded the city (even though they didn’t seem to be soldiers?), but she had gotten badly torn up in the process. Three computer chips, two bacteria colonies, one pea crab, and what else? 99% of the secret ingredients giving her her “Kihara-ness” had been destroyed.

She had only one heart left. That was fine. Everyone else only had one too.

She couldn’t get spoiled.

She was running dry, so she needed nutrients. Her powerful regeneration was working against her. Like this, she would eventually dry up into a husk. Before that happened, she needed sugar, salt, fat, protein, calcium, various vitamins and minerals, and more.

(Why do all the restaurants have to close early today of all days? There would usually be at least an izakaya or family restaurant open.)

“Oh.”

She spotted a vending machine.

The small glowing display shined bright in the darkness. It actually had power.

(Oui, oui. Vending machines are cleverly designed to continue functioning even after a fire or other disaster. Oh, I’m saved.)

And it wasn’t a drink or bread machine. It was one of the unique varieties you spotted from time to time. Specifically, this odd kind of vending machine that sold things like wagyu sukiyaki meals on the side of the street. And one of the large sample photo on this one showed…

“On this freezing night with my breath visible before me I find…ramen!! Oh, that has such a sinful ring to it. But I must do this to regain what my body has lost. How merveilleuse it is to have an actual excuse. Hwa ha ha ha ha ha! Behold, world!! I choose the piping hot tonkotsu ramen!! I am freed from all guilt as I ingest this unhealthy meal in the middle of the night!!!”

Even among the Kiharas, facing your own death was something only an oddity could do. It was a good thing the vending machine let you pay with a train card. …All of her paper money would have absorbed too much blood by this point.

A clunking sound came from the machine.

(Oh, that sounds harder than I would expect.)

With a noodles vending machine, she had imagined something like a better version of a coffee vending machine: first a styrofoam bowl, then the drained noodles and other ingredients, and finally the hot soup slowly pouring in.

Silence surrounded her.

Nothing happened after the initial clunking.

Kihara Goukei crouched down and nervously opened the overly large door to check.

“Is this…a frozen food vending machine!?”

It was rock solid.

The instructions on the package said you could enjoy restaurant quality flavor after only 15 minutes in the microwave.

Was she supposed to stand around in this freezing weather for those 15 minutes?

All she had was a solid object that could probably kill someone if applied forcefully to the cranium.

“Uhh…”

Yet she really would dry up and die without something to eat. Surrounded by a freezing night with red snow covering the road, Kihara Goukei had no choice but to tear open the package, pull out the rectangular block, hold it in both hands, and gnaw on it. Yeah, it was not a flavorful experience. Sure, it had salt and fat, but that didn’t go well with the ice!! The white-frozen pieces of pork fat were especially bad. Was this some kind of divine punishment?

“?”

Suddenly, she felt like she was being watched.

There was someone, or something, here.

She found the gaze surprisingly nearby. Looking up at her.

It belonged to…a girl of around 10?

“Misaka has never seen someone eat a popsicle in the winter! says Misaka as Misaka checks the package. Tonkotsu ramen! …Misaka doesn’t remember that Gorigori-kun flavor.”

“What are you doing here? And please feel free to call me Madame Gou.”

“Well, Misaka needs to get to District 10, but she doesn’t know where it is, says Misaka as Misaka explains her predicament.”

“Eh? District 10?”

Wasn’t that the district of battles and machos, said to be the most dangerous in the city? And the girl only looked around 10, so what was she doing out alone at night?

(And if I send her back the way she came, um, oh dear. Aren’t those giant bugs and sea creatures made of weird blonde hair wandering around there?)

Kihara Goukei wept.

This sounded like trouble to her.

First Urekawa and now this. Was tonight the night for running into small children? Was it some kind of bonus mode?

“Where is District 10?”

“The complete opposite direction, so please don’t look at me…”

“If you know the way, then tell Misaka! says Misaka as Misaka begs you!”

“One heart. Just one left. Another death and I really will die… I-I’ve done more than enough already, haven’t I? I already saved Urekawa Ousuke-kun in the very middle of the night, so I really want to get home and sleep until-”

“No! ''Help me, Madame Gou''!!”

“Neh heh☆ …Well, you drive a hard bargain. When you put it like that, I can’t go to sleep now, can IIIIIIII!?”

===Part 8===

On the roof of a far distant skyscraper, one of the mass-produced military clones known as the Sisters removed her eye from the scope of a large sniper rifle.

“She doesn’t appear to be a threat, concludes Misaka #10032.”

“Doesn’t appear to be? Are you glitching? What kind of fuzzy opinion is that for a living computer?”

“It is called personal growth.”

She had grown enough to make casual remarks over the Misaka Network at any rate.

Misaka Worst, who was tuned to pick up on the especially malicious emotions within that vast network composed of countless identical brainwave signals, responded with exasperation in her voice.

“This is all because you discussed that stuff on the Misaka Network, you know? Have you forgotten that mini-Misaka is your host and control tower? She can hear everything you say, even if it’s in your sleep.”

“You mean that our ability to control electricity might be able to force open the lock on the new Board Chairman’s Master Key? asks Misaka for confirmation.”

“No, that screwing it up would destroy the Master Key! If it turns out the only way forward is for the #1 to wake up, then of course the little one’s going to try and do something about it. Goddammit, what a pain. …But Yoshikawa’s the real loser here. She’s locked in her room with nothing to do. Cause the great Last Order used her power to hack the electric lock.”

“Then wouldn’t it be best to send her straight there? Also, that person appears to be a Kihara, which should come in handy on the way, says Misaka, providing her opinion.”

“Then are we finally going to stop playing stalker? Misaka doesn’t want to hold onto this sniper rifle in this cold-ass weather any longer. Misaka is afraid her cheek is going to freeze to the metal.”

“If you are fine with that immortality expert getting her hands on clone technology, responds Misaka. Misaka checked her spec sheet and it would be a real pain if she learned to multiply herself.”

“…When can Misaka finally get back to bed?”

“As if you have any intention of doing that.”

===Part 9===

Great Demon Coronzon slipped through the darkness like a shadow.

She had chosen a stadium that was unusually large even among the outdoor track stadiums. Everything she currently sought was contained there. Here she could convert her physical body into a massive amount of Telesma energy. Once that was done, she only had to send herself into the current of a ley line running underground. She would still be limited to the planet, but that would allow her to instantly escape anywhere on Earth, even the opposite side of the planet.

Wasn’t its maximum capacity 255 thousand?

The outdoor type without a dome was easier to scale up in size, but this felt like overdoing it.

Academy City had a population of 2.3 million, so a full tenth of the population could be crammed inside.

Humans were apparently frail beings who were afflicted by loneliness when standing alone in a massive artificial space, but she was a being known as a great demon.

She felt nothing amiss as she walked toward the center.

Other than the wrongness of her own existence.

“Sitra Achra, hm?”

Coronzon rolled that term around on her tongue.

And smiled cynically.

Sitra Achra could be described as the substance that caused evil. The current world, from the tiny humans to the vast world itself, could supposedly be fully described using the diagram called the Sephiroth, but there were some impurities which did not fit into the grand Sephiroth. Those impurities were Sitra Achra. They were ruins – shards – of the old world which was destroyed to create the current one. They were the substance that caused evil. They had no place in the current world, had no role, and should not have remained, so their very existence obstructed the system of the current age. Like pebbles caught in the gears.

The world god had created was perfect.

Things only went awry because of the extraneous impurities mixed in.

(Sounds like me.)

Shadow covered her face as she silently expressed this only silently.

Even though self-deprecation could not turn evil into good.

She had always questioned it.

Why hadn’t she become an angel of love? Or an angel of righteousness?

If she had been…

If she had been given that role…

…She would have poured herself into that work more diligently than anyone else.

If god had known from the beginning that Coronzon would rebel against heaven and turn evil and had let her go ahead and do it because it was part of some kind of plan of his, then she would ''overdo'' the role god had given her and ruin that plan.

God was an absolute being, but he did not save all lives.

Everyone accepted that even their misfortunes would be given meaning and purpose if they obeyed god.

But the very existence of that system meant he had known from the beginning there would be victims. He had known and let it happen. For some grand plan of his.

Coronzon’s role was to tear people apart. Why should she obey someone who had abandoned her?

So she had decided to use everything given to her and ''overdo'' it. That way she could obliterate that heartless plan without betraying her purpose.

She would dedicate herself to her evil identi-

…?

At that point, she tilted her head.

No, wait. She had noticed it this time.

Her memories skipped a few seconds.

“Dammit, not again…Aleister!!”

She held a hand to her head.

She had finally managed to prepare this place for her ceremony, but she would have to leave if word reached Kamijou’s group.

Coronzon started to panic…but then it hit her.

A few seconds.

She stood in the very center of an enormous stadium. She had no computer or smartphone to contact anyone and there were no old-fashioned payphones in sight. So even if Aleister had hijacked her body, he couldn’t have done anything in that time. She could ignore the outrage if it only lasted a few seconds.

On the other hand…

(It’s good I noticed it this time, but was the gap itself longer than before?)

She had a bad feeling about this.

Was Aleister starting to get the hang of it? That concern crept up in the back of her mind. Losing consciousness for even a second in the middle of a battle with her pursuers could be fatal. And even if that didn’t happen, Aleister could attempt suicide if he took control for long enough.

He would do it.

Especially now that he viewed her as his enemy and had killing her as his primary objective.

Directly comparing their specs wasn’t enough to rest easy. Aleister had won the Battle of Blythe Road after all.

Coronzon consciously took a deep breath.

(I need to shift my focus.)

Not only were there other stadiums, but magic materials could be found anywhere. After all, Aleister Crowley had built this city during the confusion of the postwar recovery. It was an alternate form for the Abbey of Thelema. It had been deftly hidden by repainting it all in the terms of science, but it would be hard to find places and objects here without magical symbolism.

Coronzon only had to collect the items that were already present.

She wouldn’t have any difficulty as long she knew the proper way to combine them.

She could begin the ceremony at any time.

The only problem was how long it would take.

…No matter how much she tried to shorten that time, she couldn’t reduce it to zero. And she would be entirely defenseless in that time. She was the Coronzon who had destroyed legendary magicians like Mathers and Aleister, but during that time she could be killed even by an ordinary human.

“…”

Coronzon shut her eyes, held her breath, and searched for any sounds around her.

She was focused on the area outside the stadium.

(My greatest enemy is the time limit. Because I’m sure they’re searching for me with everyone they have. Weak as they are, hiding from them is a pain when there are so many of them. For once I need to look out for weaklings because this crucial ceremony will be ruined if they interfere in the middle of it.)

===Part 10===

When they checked the map based on Index’s advice, the answer was obvious.

Kamijou pointed at a spot on the large map.

“The General Athletics Stadium. …It’s gotta be this, right? It’s a track stadium and there’s a huge underground waterway running below it!”

“If Coronzon is using Zeus symbolism for a ceremony to send her through a ley line, then it must be there.”

The white girl sounded confident.

It wasn’t like they had any other leads to go on, so Kamijou had to trust in this one.

“Fool.”

Someone else called out to him.

Anna Sprengel.

“I double-checked it all just to be safe, and everything the grimoire library said checks out. Her calculations are correct, so Coronzon should be at the General Athletics Stadium. The only question left is if we arrive in time.”

The Amakusas were magicians who blended into modern society, so they all knew how to drive. …Kamijou preferred not to think about where they had procured so many vehicles in Academy City, but it would be best to make use of them now.

And just as he was thinking that, his eyes met another pair of eyes.

But these definitely weren’t human.

They were compound eyes.

A carnivorous dragonfly more than three meters long was gliding at eye level.

It was made of blonde hair.

“Coronzon’s…scouts!?”

“Stupid bug jamboree!!”

He heard an odd voice just before a blonde young woman drop-kicked the giant dragonfly from the side, sending it flying. She was the Transcendent Bologna Succubus.

“Just when I thought I’d caught up on foot, this is what I find? When do I get a breather!?”

“Pant, gasp… M-my coat…is so heavy with…the steel armor and the terrariums…I’m dyiiiiiing…”

Even as she complained, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet deflected the scouts’ attacks with her thick coat. …Wait, did she just protect the Bologna Succubus?

However, squashing a single dragonfly wasn’t enough to turn the tide.

There were butterflies, hornets, stag beetles, flies, and more.

Kanzaki raised her voice.

“If she’s sending these out, it must mean we’re getting close!”

It didn’t feel like Coronzon was trying to lay low and hide anymore. Did she want to buy time even if it made her more conspicuous?

She really was here.

In District 20. Index, Anna Sprengel, and the others had been right.

…The question was whether or not these scouts were passing information back to Coronzon. Either way, it would be best not to waste time here.

“We need to strike before she can get away!!” shouted Kamijou.

===Part 11===

The scouts sent out by Great Demon Coronzon included three meter dragonflies and hornets.

Kamijou immediately clenched his right fist, but nothing would be more annoying than having a group of 20 or 30 drop from the sky all at once. Kihara Noukan turned his way and shouted.

“Be careful. If they grab onto you and carry you up high, you will be playing a deadly version of the crane game!”

He couldn’t let the flying scouts use the powerful weapon that was height.

Plus, the stag beetle ones wouldn’t even need lift him up. They could crush or slice his body right here on the ground.

“Get inside, it doesn’t matter where!!”

On Kanzaki’s instructions, Kamijou and Mikoto practically tackled open the door to a nearby building.

They ran further inside. When they reached a more open space, they found something odd there.

A frozen pool?

No, was it a skating rink?

Kamijou wasn’t familiar with them and had imagined them as something like a massive cold storage warehouse, but was this skating rink actually warmer than outside?

“They’re coming. Those weird bugs are coming!!”

“Wait, Misaka! Don’t use your Railgun down a straight corridor! Are you trying to hit our friends!?”

Lucia, Angelene, and more of the Former Agnese Force jumped on the giant flies as a group. That still wasn’t enough offensive power, but it slowed the scouts enough for Blodeuwedd the Bouquet and Anna Sprengel to finish them off with stronger attacks.

The scouts were powerful. They were, but they weren’t Great Demon Coronzon herself. The scouts made of her blonde hair were not unbeatable!

“In that case…”

“Hm? Lad, don’t let your guard down!!”

A supposedly defeated scout stirred.

No, a large quantity of something burst from the giant stag beetle’s body. Flat ovals about fifty centimeters long poured out like a slot machine jackpot. There were more than a hundred of them and they were all wriggling. And squirming.

There were more scouts…inside the scouts?

And a ton of them!!

“Ahhhhhhh!?”

Kamijou backed away, more creeped out than afraid of the threat they posed. The small scouts leaped at the boy one after another.

Itsuwa sharply jabbed her spear out to guard him, but she grimaced.

“They’re hard. Are they based on parasitic shellfish!?”

“You mean the more enemies we defeat, the more of them there will be? Hard to think of a better way to buy time!” shouted Othinus.

Kamijou’s group would be overwhelmed by the enemy army.

Sounds like collapsing piles of sand came from all around.

“Wow!”

Alice Anotherbible was the only one capable of smiling as they swarmed around her. A normal human would be bitten into tiny pieces if they tried that!!

They would be killed if they didn’t defeat the attacking scouts, but defeating the scouts only allowed them to multiply.

It was a vicious cycle.

…And Kamijou had only thought of these things as scouts made of blonde hair. But he felt pity for them now that he saw them forced to fight, writhing in pain as they burst from within, and releasing a flood of other monsters.

“Fool, now isn’t the time. If you stop, we will be killed!”

Great Demon Coronzon.

Even if she was fighting for her life, she shouldn’t force her own side to do this.

A dull crash broke through Kamijou’s thoughts.

It came from directly in front of him. The skating rink’s wall broke through and a giant rotary snowplow emerged from the side. The row of scouts in its path were crushed and sliced up by the rotating blades.

The fluffy blonde Amakusa was operating it.

Kamijou had seen her a few times before. Wasn’t her name Tsushima?

“Hop on!! Coronzon is our top priority, so we can’t waste our time with these things!!”

There was no reason to stick around here. The giant rotating blades on the front and the snow expulsion device sticking out the side like an elephant’s trunk looked dangerous, but Kamijou grabbed into something like a short ladder on the side. Only after the heavy snowplow begin to move did he notice something.

“W-where’s Index!? And Misaka too!”

“I’m not the only Amakusa. And everyone will soon think to use snowmobiles and other vehicles capable of driving on this red snow. We all have the same destination, so we’ll meet back up with them if we head to the track stadium!!”

A few others managed to jump onto the snowplow. He saw Kanzaki and Itsuwa among them.

A three meter dragonfly was still stubbornly pursuing them, but it was shot down by a beam of light. Neither Kanzaki nor Itsuwa had done that. Apparently another vehicle was following them.

Eventually, no more hornets and stag beetles could be seen.

Kamijou sighed and leaned against the rotary snowplow that rattled along on its continuous tracks.

“Well…it certainly is a good thing that Tsushima was there to help us, human,” said the 15cm god.

“Yeah, it really was. Life is so much easier when you have a capable young woman around. Thanks.”

“…Ohh?” “…Ohh?”

“(Wait, did I just step on some deadly landmine here. And to make matters worse, two of them at once?)”

A secret light shined sharply from Kanzaki Kaori and Itsuwa’s eyes and Tsushima wept in the driver’s seat.

===Part 12===

It was late at night. 1 AM had come and gone.

When you imagined a late night hospital, did you think of a horror story? Or something more risque? After many long years working here, the frog-faced doctor knew neither option was likely. When you worked there day in and day out, even a special location became no more than a routine. The fear faded and any weird expectations vanished.

Of course, he wouldn’t normally be working on this shift, but today was a special day. He hadn’t gotten any rest during the day either.

A young medical intern gave him a worried look.

“You need to get some sleep, doctor. You’re no good to us here if you pass out.”

“If I could get some free time…yes, there is something I should do, so can you cover things here?”

“Doctor!” the intern called after him, but this was his nature. He wanted to save every patient he could.

If Kamijou Touma was already dead, then there was nothing to be done.

But what if the boy was still alive?

Then he was the frog-faced doctor’s patient.

If a patient had received improper treatment, it was a doctor’s duty to save them.

(What a pain. Where do I even start with determining if a supposedly dead person is alive or dead? The guidelines for brain death would probably be best. Or mayb-)

He left the hospital.

And some strange thing attacked him only three steps out the door.

“Eh?”

If he had to describe it, he would have called it a golden crab standing more than three meters tall.

Even after seeing the pincer raised high, the frog-faced doctor only managed to get out a confused sound.

He did not properly understand the danger.

Yes.

He had no way of knowing since he knew nothing of magic, but his hospital was in District 7. That was the area where Coronzon had scattered so many of her scouts made of blonde hair.

And Coronzon had been so focused on escaping she hadn’t actually ordered them to stop.

Which meant they were still acting on orders to protect the ceremonial ground for Adikalika – the former site of the Windowless Building.

A pleasant slashing sound raced out.

The frog-faced doctor did not shed a single drop of blood.

It was sliced vertically.

The blonde hair scout’s bisected halves scattered to either side.

His eyes widened in confusion as a dark, lithe figure whispered to him.

“It is a pleasure to see you again, doctor.”

===Part 13===

In the District 20 skating rink, Misaka Mikoto had definitely seen that pointy-haired boy on the side of a large rotary snowplow.

And it had happened as the vehicle drove right past her.

She had been left behind.

“I want to shoot that idiot so bad.”

She flicked up arcade coins and launched a few Railguns at the monsters as she retreated from the skating rink proper into a narrow corridor.

The more she defeated, the more of them there were, which couldn’t have been much more annoying.

And the initial dragonflies and stag beetles were powerful enough already, so she would be killed if she didn’t fight back. There was no room for holding back.

(Are the others retreating somewhere too? There isn’t time to ask where we’ll meet up next, so I’ll just have to magnetically attach myself to one of the vehicles’ roofs.)

And all of a sudden, something occurred to Misaka Mikoto.

“…Wait.”

(If that idiot is alive, then why am I even wearing mourning clothes? Ahhh, how long am I going to keep wearing this cumbersome outfit? Now I feel like I’ve been making a fool of myself!!)

This was a sports facility, so would they have rental sportswear anywhere? Even a track suit or jumpsuit would be fine. She was willing to ignore how it looked if it was at least warm and didn’t restrict her movements!!

But this was a skating rink.

That meant any clothing would be for skating.

Such as a painfully bright lemon yellow figure skating uniform.

“U-um, would you call this a skating dress?”

It wouldn’t restrict her movements since it was designed for sports use. Combined with the bladeless shoes meant for the staff, she would have no trouble moving around. At the very least, she would have a much easier time of it than in this Japanese clothing. But why did it have to have a miniskirt? Or should she think of it more like a swimsuit’s pareo? Either way, it wasn’t something for walking around town in!

“B-but it’s so cold! What choice do I have!?”

She had decided herself she was willing to ignore how it looked.

It would certainly protect her from the biting chill of the January night.

It left less skin exposed than she had expected. Because it covered her with a skin-colored material.

But that was a problem of its own. The thin synthetic fiber was like wearing a full-body stocking. A terrifying thought for someone who tended to get zappy at the drop of a hat!

===Part 14===

Kamijou and the others arrived at a dark shape so large they truly had to look up to see it all.

This was the General Athletics Stadium.

Its size was apparent even from the outside.

Its diameter alone had to be hundreds of meters.

Instead of a dome covering it, it was apparently an outdoor stadium. Still, tall walls surrounded it on all sides. Those would be for the tiered seating, but they were just as tall as a four story building. So the same as a school building. This meant there was no seeing inside from out here.

Several other vehicles joined the rotary snowplow operated by Tsushima.

Index and Misaka Mikoto were among them.

“Thank good- woah! Misaka, what are you wearing!?”

“Don’t look at me!! Don’t look at my new and improved flavor with 20% extra at the same great price!!”

Her retort was as unusual as her outfit.

Was this the higher rarity version that showed more skin, or had she been unable to bear the cold and chose to rely on a figure skating outfit? He wished she would stop tugging down on the miniskirt-like part because that only drew his eye there all the more.

The Bologna Succubus and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet were both tilting their heads (in friendly synchronization?). …Yeah, they probably wouldn’t get what the big deal was when they had no trouble walking around in the frigid January night in their underwear or a naked apron.

But focusing on this wasn’t going to lead them to Coronzon.

Kamijou was curious about something.

“The tall walls keep us from seeing inside. I hope that also means Coronzon can’t see out.”

“Does it mean that? Wouldn’t a great demon be able to use clairvoyance or remote viewing?”

Tracking expert Takitsubo brought up a difficult topic.

“In modern Western magic, clairvoyance isn’t a means of seeing the contents of a closed envelope. It’s a ceremony used for spiritual meditation.”

Kanzaki provided an explanation, but it was hard to grasp without a solid foundation in the magic side.

She had spread out a large map, probably a privilege she had gained by taking control of the city. That she went to the trouble of printing out a paper copy seemed to show she still wasn’t used to the science side, though.

“It was fortunate we could get our hands on the official blueprints. Our numbers work in our favor. First, we should station personnel at each exit. There are more than 20 official gates for spectators and the real number is even greater due to the unofficial entrances for athletes and staff. With the exits blocked, we can begin exploring inside. Once we know where Coronzon is inside the large stadium and how she has modified it for her ceremony, we can launch our attack.”

“Coronzon should be defenseless while she works,” added Index. “Even if we can’t win a straight fight, we should be able to win right now.”

They could win?

Then why not charge in right this instant?

Kamijou couldn’t believe they would stay out when they knew she was in there.

Othinus must have sensed his impatience because she made a piercing comment from his shoulder.

“Wait, human. If Coronzon detects us and runs off, this will all have been a waste of time.”

“Either way, we should carefully investigate the situation inside and gather what information we can. We can always make our attack after all escape routes we are aware of have been covered.”

Kamijou was a little surprise to find Anna Sprengel advocating the cautious option.

Had that wicked woman learned how frightening it was to have everything fall apart at the last second?

“But can we really wait around that long? There’s that ley line thing, right? That direct route running underground that only the great demon can use. We can have her surrounded as much as we want – it won’t matter if she just teleports out of here!”

“Failure puts the entire human race at risk. Great Demon Coronzon will be able to do more than just this.”

Was that why she didn’t want anyone spying on her from the sky?

After giving a skeptical look at the Bologna Succubus (or her clothing more likely), Kanzaki nodded in agreement.

“We mustn’t forget that she will have escaped if she physically crosses the city wall.”

“But we don’t know the time limit!!”

“It won’t be in the next 5 or 10 minutes at least. That gives us time to take it slow, human.”

===Part 15===

“Hm.”

Great Demon Coronzon put a hand on her hip and observed her surroundings.

She stood at the very center of the enormous stadium.

“That completes the ceremonial ground. And the attribute extracted from the stadium as a whole gives me what I need. Direction, time, number…and the actual spiritual item in my hands: the tattva cards.”

She held a few colorful cards.

However, these cards were not historical antiques.

They were only symbols meant to help one enter the special mental state of meditation, so as long as the colors and symbols were correct, the material was immaterial. They were in fact made by coloring cardstock with thick permanent markers she had acquired after breaking the metal shutter covering a stadium shop. (There was probably a demand for materials that spectators could use to make placards or to draw their team’s logo on their face.)

Perhaps the stadium functioned like a giant magical circle with the cards acting as a control medium like a mouse or keyboard.

Coronzon had a physical body, but her true essence was a collection of Telesma energy. Unlike the pure angels, she was a mixture of different elements, which could be a pain, but by breaking them apart, she too could be handled as pure energy.

That meant she could inject herself into a weapon or armor or she could be carried around inside a thin talisman.

Or she could send herself through the ley lines to instantly travel to the other side of the planet.

“Now, time to begin,” she whispered.

===Part 16===

Kamijou was anxious.

Great Demon Coronzon was inside there, but the great size of the stadium worked against them. With more than 20 public gates, entering the wrong way would give Coronzon a chance to escape out a different one.

They needed to know her exact location before heading in.

…He understood the Anglicans’ point, but that didn’t mean he liked it. No matter how well they prepared themselves, Coronzon would disappear if they didn’t arrive in time. Then the world’s doom would begin on the other side of the planet. Coronzon would be able to choose any location she liked, so she could ensure the optimal conditions for herself. The next time would be far worse. Everything might truly be destroyed.

Next to him, Index spoke up. Addressing Kanzaki.

“Are you going to run a search from the outside? Isn’t that dangerous too?”

“It is. She could detect the magic power of a normal through-walls scan. However, we Amakusas have specialized in hiding our faith to avoid persecution, so we know a few tricks we can use.”

Kamijou and Mikoto had no clue what the Amakusas were working on with such determined looks on their faces. At this point, Index and her 103,001 memorized grimoires was the only person they could rely on.

She got it right on the first guess.

“The Maria Kannon?”

“This isn’t how they were originally used, but they were designed to look like an ordinary Buddhist figure while revealing its true face as the Virgin Mary to anyone who knew what to look for. By intentionally taking a broad interpretation of that concept, it can be remade into a camouflage-breaking searching spell to locate that which is hidden.”

===Part 17===

In the very center of the spacious stadium, Great Demon Coronzon sat quietly, regulated her breathing, and placed her index finger against one of the toxically colorful cards lined up on the ground.

Something felt off.

A sensation like a finger pressed between her eyes caused a tingling in the center of her head. Even though she was the one reaching out her finger. No, it was meaningless to think of it in that way.

The two were linked.

To touch it was to be touched.

The line between the self and the other – between the inner world and the outer world – was blurring.

The core of her body distorted. She was uncertain where she was even sitting.

“Kh.”

Her head wobbled. A vertiginous fluctuation interrupted her thoughts.

This was an Eastern mystical philosophy from ancient India.

She knew it wasn’t a good fit for her. A pure and proper angel never could have done it. But she was an impure and wicked being known as a great demon. And the Crowley system said every from of the mystical could be incorporated into your own spells if you reinterpreted it with your own logic. The wise would not give up just because they reached an impasse. They would use the discovery of that impasse to further elevate themselves.

She took deep breaths.

She consciously guided her thoughts toward stability.

She needn’t think of purifying herself.

There didn’t have to be just one answer.

The tattva cards did not work with pure elements in the first place.

Mathers had warned that meditation using those painfully colorful cards could cause intense anxiety or headaches for a mere human if used incorrectly. So how much worse would the damage from failure be for Coronzon as she tried to return herself to a state of pure energy?

She did not approach the true essence of this Eastern mystical philosophy.

The tattva cards were no more than tools used for control. That would have been how the Golden cabal used them too. They were valuable when it came to understanding the five elements, but there would be discrepancies between the cabal’s manual and the actual Eastern philosophy.

(The work has just passed 50%. That would explain why this inner fear and anxiety is taking on such concrete form.)

Coronzon did not move her eyes.

She had to focus her whole mind on ascending straight up.

Thus, any trivial distractions and detours could end up tearing her ego apart.

So she always stared straight ahead, using only the corner of her vision to watch how her own shadow wavered and thinned.

It was progressing well.

Once her shadow fully vanished, she would have also ''physically'' disappeared from Academy City.

The destruction of the world was within reach.

===Part 18===

“How is that search spell going!?” shouted Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

“I-it just passed 70%!” nervously reported Itsuwa.

70%.

That was more than halfway done, but Kamijou and the others didn’t know Coronzon’s status. If she was even a single percentage point ahead of them, they wouldn’t finish in time. It was possible the Anglicans would fully surround the stadium and rush in only to find Coronzon had already vanished.

Othinus sighed from Kamijou’s shoulder.

“There’s no need to wait until it’s 100% complete. We know Coronzon is in this building. So if we attack the small unsearched spots, we can confirm her location by sight.”

“How much of the stadium do you think those ‘small spots’ cover?” strongly retorted Kanzaki. “The search has covered 70% or maybe 80%. We’re risking our lives going in, so we want a little more assurance than that!!”

“What do you think, Touma?” asked Index.

“Hm? We should go in now! Right now!!”

He had no idea why an outsider like him had been asked for his opinion on a magical matter, but he gave his answer right away.

“Tsujiura,” said Index. “Kushiura and Qiu Xiang Bu also work. Those are Eastern, so the Amakusas should be able to use them too.”

“I see. So the idea that the first thing said by someone ignorant of the topic at hand can be used for divination,” said Kanzaki, sounding impressed.

In this case, Kamijou’s ignorance of magic gave his words meaning.

…He felt like this was declaring him useless in this fight, which seemed kind of insulting, but if the experts would listen to what he had to say, he didn’t care why.

Whatever the case, Kamijou’s words set them all into motion.

“Kanzaki will join one of the Amakusa teams, I guess. Okay, Alice!! You go lend Agnese’s group a hand!”

“Hm? The girl would prefer to stay with you, teacher.”

“Please! And Anna, you go with that team including Itsuwa and Tsushima!”

“Fool. I will step on you later.”

They complained, but they still split up.

Even Takitsubo and Kihara Noukan did as he said. They had to know even less about magic than him, but they were still risking their lives to stop this unknown threat.

After all, there were more than twenty public gates. The Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force would be blocking all of those exits, but they were dealing with ''the'' Coronzon here. Ordinary magicians weren’t enough. Each team needed an irregular member such as a Saint like Kanzaki Kaori, a Transcendent like the Bologna Succubus or Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, or even a special Transcendent like Anna Sprengel or Alice Anotherbible.

Kamijou didn’t see this as splitting up their forces.

Once they entered the stadium, they would converge on Coronzon’s location. He didn’t want anyone dying in the “blank time” until they broke down the right door and found Coronzon. He was sick of Coronzon being able to choose one of them at random for a one-hit kill lottery. Even if one team was unfortunate enough to run across Coronzon on their way in, they didn’t have to defeat her. Kamijou wanted to give each team someone who could let them survive until the other teams arrived.

Mikoto, who always felt left behind when it came to magical matters, suddenly panicked.

“W-wait, what about me!?”

“You’re with me, of course!! C’mon!!”

“Eh? O-oh…okay.”

Kamijou and Mikoto would enter through the closest gate: Gate 15. Neither knew much about magic, but he figured Othinus’s presence would make up for that. Index’s knowledge was the most important of all, so he couldn’t keep it to himself.

Gate 15 was shut with a metal grate shutter and a glass door, but Mikoto only had to inhale and exhale before it all opened for them. And not just Gate 15. All of the shutters and locks opened at once.

Without waiting for the shutter to fully rise, they ducked below it.

They entered a dark corridor.

And ran.

“Hey, human. Don’t get one-shotted here. Even if Coronzon is busy, she could have sent out those scouts.”

Othinus warned him from his shoulder, but Kamijou didn’t have time to respond. If they were even a second too late, it was all over.

His heart pounded in his ears. He felt like he was going to die on his own without Coronzon having to lift a finger. But he gritted his teeth and kept running.

He wouldn’t let her try again at destroying the world.

He would end this tonight.

===Part 19===

(75%.)

Great Demon Coronzon’s voice no longer vibrated the air.

From her perspective, it was less like her body was unraveling and more like the world around her was changing. Or maybe like she was crossing the boundary between phases. Her coordinates remained the same, but the scene around her changed as if flipping over a page.

Perhaps there was no real difference between the two.

The Golden cabal never managed to send their body across. Thus, their experts had tried to separate just their minds in an act known as astral projection to virtually achieve a leap between phases. They had worked hard to peek into another world like heaven or hell. …And as a result, quite a few magicians had failed to cling to their sanity.

Coronzon’s nearly transparent fingertip passed right through the tattva card.

She was more than halfway on the other side now.

The great demon grinned.

(No more physical control is needed at this point. Now I only have to wait for the process to complete!!)

===Part 20===

Kamijou and Mikoto ran down a long, long corridor.

They couldn’t afford to hide their footsteps now.

Coronzon was so close.

“We’re going to come out into the stands, right? How far is it to the actual sports field!?”

“The actual distance isn’t that far, but the stands aren’t flat. Don’t trip and fall in the darkness, okay?”

Mikoto gave him a surprisingly sincere answer.

There hadn’t been any bright beams of light or explosions yet.

What were Kanzaki, Agnese, and the others doing?

They would have entered through all the entrances at once, but apparently none of the teams had run into Coronzon. They didn’t know where she was hiding to complete her ceremony, but she hadn’t noticed their presence yet. That made this their best chance.

If they failed, it was all over.

(We might not win in a straight fight, but what if she’s immobilized by the important ceremony? This time will be different. This is our only chance to settle things with her!!)

The end of the corridor came into view.

Like a rectangular hole cut out of the darkness.

Kamijou gritted his teeth, clenched his fist, and ran with all his might.

He emerged into a silent space. The flow of time ground to a halt.

No one was there.

The place was deserted.

“What’s…going on?” muttered Kamijou, stopped partway down the stands.

He could hear more people emerging from different directions. But that was all. Even from here, he could see Agnese, the Bologna Succubus, and others looking around in confusion on the other side of the stadium. The great demon wasn’t shining bright as she completed some kind of ceremony and Coronzon didn’t began a fierce battle in an attempt to escape.

Great Demon Coronzon wasn’t here.

It didn’t feel like she had fled in a panic either. There was no warmth in the vast space. It had likely been empty this entire time. Coronzon had never been here. They had chosen the wrong location.

Had their calculations been off?

No, they hadn’t been relying on Index alone. It had been a group effort with help from Anna Sprengel, Kanzaki Kaori, and more from the magic side. And they had been certain Coronzon would use this stadium if she was using Zeus symbolism. So how could they have been wrong!?

“Touma.”

A girl from another group joined him.

Index’s usual childlike air was broken by the trembling voice she forced out.

She seemed hesitant to speak.

“Is this district used for any other special purpose? Other than sports!”

“Huh? Yes. It is a district of stadiums and domes meant to hold tens of thousands of people. I think Aogami Pierce mentioned it being the holy land for idol concerts.”

A quiet thud reached his ears.

Index was unable to support her wobbling body and fell back into one of the seats. The cat mewed in complaint from her arms.

“Then Coronzon wasn’t using sports as the symbol for a sanctuary or temple.”

Her lips quivered.

“Songstresses, plays…she was using the performing arts. Which means it isn’t Zeus! And if she is using a different symbol and a different god, she would be in an entirely different location!!”

===Part 21===

Maximum occupancy: 255 thousand.

Coronzon snorted with laughter when she recalled that extreme number.

…A soccer stadium or baseball stadium could never reach that number even with every seat filled. That display was meant for a concert or live performance where even the field itself was filled with seats.

Coronzon was somewhere like that.

(This district is filled with stadiums and domes. To put it another way, most of them are not the designated home field of a pro team whose games you can watch on a sports app. And “just a stadium” isn’t going to be used just for sports. …District 20’s stadiums probably make most of their income this way. I saw through that right away. And a facility primarily used for concerts is not a Zeus-associated track stadium. To be blunt, this is a large facility built for shows, not for sports.)

She didn’t want Apollo, god of music.

She wanted Dionysus, god of theater.

In ancient Greece, sporting events had been held in sanctuaries as a ceremonial offering to a god, but plays and songs had been made as offering in those same sanctuaries. Thus, holding a concert or live performance in a stadium that could contain a large audience was not a new idea.

Greek theater was the origin of modern stage plays. And the original form of that had been a festival held as an offering to Dionysus, god of alcohol and insanity.

That meant his symbols could be extracted from a large stadium like this.

(The work is past 90%. And yet no pursuit has arrived yet. What’s the matter, humanity? If you let me escape this easily, you will be extinct by tomorrow!!)

===Part 22===

So not sports but music. No, theater.

Not a stadium for sporting events but for concerts and live performances.

When they corrected the initial assumption and had Index recalculate, they were given a single candidate.

“The Brilliant Outdoor Performance Stadium. It points north and, if the adjacent park is viewed as a mountain forest, you could extract the symbols of Dionysus. This time I’m sure of it! A god of insanity would be perfect for controlling her power as a chaotic great demon!”

Now that they had a new answer, they couldn’t just sit around.

Their initial wrong answer would have given Coronzon that much more time for the ceremony to break her body down into energy. As soon as she finished that, she would dive into a ley line and escape to the other side of the planet. There wasn’t a moment to lose.

Kamijou and the others hitched a ride on the rotary snowplow driven by Tsushima of the Amakusas to reach the new destination.

It was in the same district.

Driving there, it wouldn’t take long. The giant stadium capable of holding 255 thousand came into view.

“Is that it? Please still be in the city, Coronzon. Dammit.”

As soon as Kamijou jumped down from the snowplow onto the red snow, he staggered to the side.

He regathered his strength, somehow managing to keep himself steady, but he bumped into something next to him.

But not because he had nearly fallen.

“Ugh…”

He heard a small groan.

From Takitsubo Rikou.

She must have arrived on a different vehicle. Kamijou instinctually caught the unsteady track suit girl…and found her body temperature was higher than he had expected.

Not just warm, but blazing hot.

He was shocked.

“That’s not good… How long have you been hiding this, Takitsubo!?”

“…”

She refused to say a word.

She had been knocked out by some kind of attack from Coronzon during the Adikalika stuff. It was a miracle she was even still alive, yet she had joined the chase instead of calling an ambulance. Anyone would be in a similar state after that.

“You can’t go on. You need to get some rest! You’ve seen the way things are, right!? The Anglicans don’t want to torment Hamazura!!”

“You should listen to your own advice, Touma. Stopping Adikalika was more than enough of a win. You’re hurt, so stay here and look after her,” said an exasperated Index.

Even though it was she who had actually stopped the attack after arriving late. She had a perfect memory, so this wasn’t just a mistake. So was she giving them the credit? When he thought about it, he realized Kanzaki, Agnese, and the others hadn’t actually seen the moment Adikalika was stopped…

Speaking of Kanzaki, she called everyone over.

“If the countdown is close to the end, we can’t spend time on an initial search like before. That will mean a greater risk when we enter. Needless to say…”

“Then do we have time to sit around listening to the headmaster’s speech? I’ll steal a map of the stadium with my powers, so let’s get going!”

Mikoto, Index, Kanzaki, and the rest got moving.

In no time, there wasn’t anyone left.

It was so quiet.

Kamijou sat down and focused on taking deep breaths. He wasn’t as bad as Takitsubo, but he had lost his balance earlier. He had taken a direct hit from Coronzon. He wasn’t a doctor and couldn’t even imagine how much damage had been done inside his body, but he knew better than to be optimistic.

Takitsubo Rikou’s lips moved where she lay right next to him.

He doubted she was conscious, so maybe she was having a nightmare.

“…Hamazura…”

“Kh.”

Kamijou grimaced. In agony.

She had to be badly worried about her friend. If she didn’t do something to help out and earn points with the Anglicans, she would lose all chance of negotiating with them. But she was too injured to move.

If Coronzon did escape, who could say where they would direct their anger. Even if Kanzaki, Agnese, and the others fighting here didn’t, the higher ups watching from across the ocean might demand a live sacrifice from those who were close to Coronzon.

Could that be why Index had used such vague phrasing to give up credit for stopping Adikalika?

But it wasn’t enough. Takitsubo wanted something more to push her claim of having contributed, so Adikalika wasn’t enough and she had come with them even if it meant hiding how bad her injuries were.

And unlike her, Kamijou could still move.

He couldn’t push himself too hard.

But he had to make up his mind.

“Okay. I’ll go.”

“Human? …It figures.”

“I’ll stop Coronzon, so don’t you worry, Takitsubo. Don’t forget: winning is meaningless if you die. Your goal is to be with Hamazura, right? Then you need to rest.”

He forced his heavy body up and began to walk.

No, he was trying to run full speed, but this was the most speed he could manage.

Even so, Imagine Breaker would have to be of some use.

Coronzon’s magic was extraordinarily powerful.

Maybe he couldn’t fight her himself, but he could at least help out someone who could. If he could shield them from even a single attack, it might be enough to decide the battle.

He would overturn the game as a wild card.

===Part 23===

Great Demon Coronzon only had to wait. And the time finally arrived.

It was already over.

99%.

Even if someone barged in now, she could break her body down into Telesma and escape Academy City through the ley line before they could do anything.

Her victory was assured. Those humans were too late to prevent their doom. The silly fools should have resisted more.

But then…

“You think so? Then allow me to cause a bit of trouble.”

Her vision shattered.

Black, red, silver, blue, yellow… It all collapsed into a wild dance of colors.

No.

Crossing between phases and breaking herself down may have been the same thing. She had thought so herself.

Which meant it was she who was collapsing.

She could no longer support her sitting position and fell to the side. Something was wrong with her limbs. She couldn’t remember how to breathe. Nevertheless, she managed to gather all her strength and scream.

“A…lei…sterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!?”

“Now, now, Coronzon. You should know better than to mess with anything as dangerous as the tattva cards which even the Golden cabal had to issue a recall for. Don’t you remember what Mathers said? They can cause intense anxiety or headaches if used incorrectly. Why would you visit the mental world after going to the trouble of physically sealing me away? Are you trying to kill yourself? ''In here'', I can still wield some power.”

(Emergency…shutoff!!)

A dull “snap!” came from the center of her head.

“Khah!!”

She tried to let out the breath caught in her throat, but what came out was colored red.

For a while, she lay on her side convulsing until she forcibly suppressed the writhing of every last one of her internal organs. Yes, it was urgent that she accurately recalled the shape of her body. She had already begun to enter the ley line when the magic failed. She had to return to her original body in a hurry, but if she forgot that body’s shape now, she could be entirely annihilated.

It took her a full ten seconds.

Once she calmed her wild breathing and recalled the cycle for inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide, she had reclaimed her physical body.

The tattva cards could cause mental confusion if used incorrectly.

For her, did that mean releasing the sealed Aleister? In other words…

“Dammit!!!”

This meant a change of plans.

She couldn’t use this method anymore.

And if she was going to cross Academy City’s wall for a physical escape…she had no reason to remain in this stadium. She had to leave as soon as possible.

===Part 24===

Kamijou forced his unsteady body to keep moving and pushed open a small metal door with his shoulder.

He slipped through the half-open door, probably a staff entrance, and entered the stadium.

He found a dark, cold, heavy space.

Big too.

…He had apparently entered something like a parking garage. Was it a space for workers located below the stadium? He didn’t know enough to have a good mental picture of how stadiums were structured.

He did have his phone with him, but he didn’t know what was happening inside. The pursuers had to be careful too, so he wanted to avoid causing someone’s phone to ring while they were trying to hide.

“Index? Misaka?” he called quietly.

He didn’t know how the Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force were searching the stadium. Because they weren’t sharing information with him.

He heard some light footsteps through the darkness. They echoed off the gray walls and were moving away from him.

He immediately ran full speed in that direction.

He could tell just from listening whose they were.

“(Human, you noticed how odd that was, I trust?)”

(We all know how powerful Coronzon is, so everyone will be searching as part of a team. So no one should be leaving on their own like that!)

“Coronzon!! Is that you!?”

“You really shouldn’t have announced your presence. Unless you have the supernatural power to kill with words alone.”

The footsteps stopped.

A voice spoke from behind one of the thick concrete pillars lining the space.

A hateful voice.

“I’m relieved. Because of you I can easily kill and complete my escape. Now, Kamijou Touma, how do you intend to stop me? Don’t try to tell me that foolish shout was all part of a plan and you have a more troublesome opponent hiding nearby.”

15cm Othinus could not directly fight, so he was effectively alone.

Coronzon had seen right through him.

What about the phone in his pocket? No. He might not have a signal, but more than that, using the touchscreen in the dark parking garage would give him away with the backlight. Coronzon would act before he could call for help.

“You chose this stadium because it was your best bet, right? You can’t use magic to escape through the ley lines now. So give up, Coronzon.”

“Why should I? Great demons are perfectly capable of driving cars. And it goes without saying that ordinary cars can slip right past a scan for magic power.”

Kamijou’s eyes widened.

That was her plan immediately after trying to escape using Telesma and a ley line? She switched gears way too fast.

“How many trump cards do you have!?”

“More than a mere human could ever imagine, that’s for sure.”

If she escaped in a car, he couldn’t keep up on foot. His phone was an iffy option too. So was there nothing he could do? If he shouted at the top of his lungs, the others would surely gather here. He wouldn’t let her escape.

The voice alone continued from behind the pillar.

“How about this, Kamijou Touma? What if you keep quiet and let me go?”

“Why even ask that? It’s meaningless. If you escape tonight, you’ll work to destroy all of humanity by tomorrow, right? Then nothing you could offer me would be worth it!!”

“Oh, you will let me go. Because I happened to pick up a trump card on my way here.”

Someone emerged from behind the concrete pillar. Slowly.

Blonde hair.

A woman.

But that hair was fluffy and only fell to the shoulder blades.

This wasn’t Great Demon Coronzon.

He had only heard a single set of footsteps, so had she been captured behind the pillar?

What was being held against her from outside Kamijou’s view? The feminine lines of her body were trembling and her expression was like a cross between tears and a smile.

He recognized her as one of the Amakusas.

“Tsushima.”

It wasn’t even a case of “move and she’s dead”.

All of a sudden, the red splattered out.

From the side of her neck. Kamijou was an ordinary high school boy without much forensic medical knowledge, but the location the blood was spraying from sent a chill down his spine. She seemed to have been cut by an invisible blade.

A laughing woman stuck her head out from behind the pillar.

Great Demon Coronzon really was a demon.

“Kee hee ha ha!! Protecting human lives is no easy task, is it? Or are you willing to take another tour of hell for her!?”

Coronzon kicked Tsushima’s doll-like body from behind, shoving her toward him.

He had no choice but to catch her. Only a few seconds had passed, but she felt limp and heavy in his arms. She clung heavily to him like a down blanket soaked with water. He pressed his palm firmly against the wound in her neck. How much blood loss was lethal for a human? If he didn’t stop the blood spurting from the side of her neck, she really would die.

At that moment, Kamijou’s vision suddenly went dark.

But not because Coronzon had done anything. It took him a while to even realize that. He had long since pushed his body past the limit.

He shouldn’t have been up and about at all.

“Human!!”

“Kah…ah…?”

He felt horribly faint.

He collapsed and couldn’t get back up. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t move his arms and legs very much. He wasn’t even sure which way was up.

“Kh.”

He held Tsushima tight in his arms. He gritted his teeth and tried to take in as much information on the physical reality around him. Sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch… it didn’t matter what. He was afraid he would pass out otherwise.

“Ha ha ha!! You said it was meaningless, didn’t you? You couldn’t have been more right! Why bother saving a life or two now when I will be destroying the entire world soon!”

No, it wasn’t working.

Even after all this…he couldn’t stop his mind from slipping away into darkness.

He had to avoid removing his hand from that neck wound.

He heard the sound of metal breaking.

Then the sound of an engine starting and the sound of Coronzon driving a car away.

“Wait…Coronzon…”

The darkness took over.

Kamijou Touma’s consciousness fully faded.

“Waiiiiit!!!”

===Part 25===

“Can you hear me?”

Near the center of the open stadium, Agnese heard a young male voice.

Hearing a voice when no one was there was nothing unusual. She was commanding more than 250 people, so she was using communication magic.

But this was odd.

The Former Agnese Force was all female.

“This…Mich………k… I have an urgent message. Can anyone hear me?”

She was using a Roman Catholic communication spiritual item derived from the Barbara Branch. It was made from a cherry tree twig with a few buds attached and it wasn’t all that unusual. …Even if it did seem wrong for nuns to be carrying around tools for love fortunetelling.

The hard buds unnaturally opened below the frigid sky and the flower petals vibrated.

They produced a human voice.

(You’re kidding. Is someone hijacking the channel!?)

“Is anyone at all in Academy City receiving this!? There is something I must tell you immediately!”

“?”

Itsuwa gave Agnese a puzzled look from nearby. …Apparently she couldn’t hear this. That meant it was targeted only at the Roman Catholics of the Former Agnese Force.

Agnese Sanctis frowned.

“This is Agnese Sanctis. Who are you?”

“Thank god… I got through! This is Michael Speak, a cardinal officially appointed by the pope!!”

She was at a loss for words.

…Those were the around a hundred ultra elites chosen out of the two billion Roman Catholics to directly advise the pope. Ordinarily, she would never even directly speak to one.

But his voice didn’t fit the part. He sounded like a stressed young man. He didn’t sound even thirty.

Perhaps his modesty was what had earned him so much popularity.

(Another Michael. And with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.)

“What does a great cardinal want with lowly peon like me?”

“Tell only the Roman Catholics to get out of there immediately. You need to leave Academy City as soon as possible. Your team will obey you if you tell them!”

“?”

She had expected a protest or sarcasm in response, so this came as a complete surprise.

This was advance warning of an attack.

She didn’t know what the Vatican was preparing to do, but she had to assume it was a fairly dangerous large-scale spell. Something even greater than Coronzon’s Adikalika.

“You mean it’s close to being activated?”

“As Roman Catholics, we cannot allow someone as dangerous as Great Demon Coronzon to escape Academy City. If she cannot be defeated on the front line, then the Vatican must reach out a helping hand.”

Reach out a helping hand.

So from their perspective, they were saving lives.

And the same went for Agnese, Lucia, Angelene, and the rest of the Former Agnese Force fighting on the front line.

“There are three activation conditions. First, if you completely lose track of Coronzon and the trail goes cold. Two, at 5:47 AM local time. In other words, at dawn. Third, if we believe a non-Catholic force has learned of our plan and could attempt to stop it. If any one of those conditions is met, the Vatican will activate Saint Georgios’s Fire.”

“Kh.”

The most important condition was the third.

That meant the Vatican didn’t want them sharing this information with anyone else. Even though this would mean the destruction of Academy City. The chance to evacuate was for the Former Agnese Force only.

…Were they being pressured to abandon Academy City and the Anglicans who they had fought and risked their lives alongside?

“We are always watching and listening, Sister Agnese. The physical distance matters little. So do not attempt to contact anyone else through trickery or deception. We will not overlook it.”

(Magical surveillance is a hell of a thing. Although I’m sure it was originally justified as a way for the pure servants of god to punish wicked magicians.)

She didn’t actually know how much she was being observed. The Catholics had been outdone by the other forces so far, so Agnese thought they had to be bluffing to an extent. But this still made it hard to take any bold action.

And she knew what Saint Georgios’s Fire was.

She had heard rumors of it back when she still lived in Italy.

There was a legend about the death of Saint Georgios, or Saint George as he was known in England. When he was being pressured to renounce his faith in a wicked temple, a great ball of fire fell from heaven and blew it all away. So it was a legend of pure attack power.

“That’s a large-scale spell that targets a distant location through the ley lines, isn’t it?”

“Ironically, it uses the same pathway Coronzon is attempting to use to escape. But since we can only use it and not control it, we cannot stop her from using it.”

The Roman Catholic spell was essentially a cluster bomb that detonated two billion explosive flames across the entirety of the targeted city.

And rather than burn everything down with the explosive blasts and flames, it used an extreme high temperature to rapidly alter the atmospheric pressure and oxygen level across the entire area. That meant fortifying oneself behind a shield or wall was meaningless. Because your own body would rupture from within. Afterwards, only a lifeless city would remain.

It was effectively the ideal form of a human killer.

(Now isn’t the time for us humans to be fighting among ourselves!!)

“I thought the pope had learned an important lesson from the trials of World War Three. I can’t believe he would agree to such a forceful solution.”

“His authorization is unnecessary. The cardinals have the right to hold an ecumenical council or election. …And the majority wish to do this. We in the minority have no way to stop them.”

“Doesn’t that seem disrespectful?”

“Abstaining in protest will not change the outcome of the vote. Did I ever say that I like that this is happening!?”

There was real strength behind those last words.

That had to be what he really thought. Which was why it pierced Agnese so deeply.

But even if he was sensible, he couldn’t change what was happening. She could tell that too.

(Well, this is a disaster…)

And there was an issue beyond the number of victims across Academy City.

A more fundamental issue.

“Don’t you know ''a human killer spell won’t affect an inhuman demon''? Sowing further confusion in Academy City will only create more openings in the city perimeter!! You’re playing right into Coronzon’s hand!!”

Apparently Coronzon’s special trait remained in effect.

She tore people apart and obstructed their evolution.

(But I can’t believe it’s gone so far.)

“Sister Agnese!!”

“What do you want, cardinal!? I’m really goddamn busy right now!”

“This is a compromise. As much of one as I could get. The original plan was to immediately activate Saint Georgios’s Fire and I only barely stopped that from happening!”

There was kindness in his words.

But that kindness was unnecessary. Something was fundamentally off about this.

“Don’t tell me this is about wounded pride. Index stopped Adikalika by redirecting it to an unnamed desert island in the Atlantic. The Italian peninsula wasn’t harmed!”

“But Coronzon did launch her large-scale attack spell. And that wasn’t her only trump card. Her power is unfathomable, so she must be destroyed when we have the chance. None of the cardinals can ignore that point. I’m sorry, but that includes me!”

She wasn’t sure what to say.

She understood. Yes, even Agnese was furious. If she hadn’t made a conscious effort to calm herself, she might have left the Anglicans back then.

“Violence is wrong,” he continued. “I understand that. We erred and let God’s Right Seat manipulate us during World War Three. …But this time, ''we are in our rights to retaliate.'' Overturning that idea will not be easy, Sister Agnese.”

(Coronzon. Your mere presence really does make a mess of humanity as a whole!)

The Roman Catholics naturally had a variety of emotions about this.

About Coronzon and about Academy City for failing to stop this crisis earlier.

…Nuclear missiles could destroy the world, so it would take a lot of guts to launch the first one yourself. But what if an enemy launched one at you first? That would lower the mental hurdle for pressing the launch button considerably.

People were easily influenced by the word “retaliation”. And that could burn down the entire world.

“I will do everything I can, but I doubt I can stop this from happening. Sooner or later, Saint Georgios’s Fire will be launched.”

He was one of the sensible ones.

He would truly prefer not to use it.

But that was why nothing he said was a mere threat or bluff.

For the pacifists, nothing was more painful than having to declare that an atrocity would soon be happening.

“So you need to escape that city immediately. It’s a shame what will happen to Academy City and the Anglicans, but it’s too late for them. Gather up all the Roman Catholics and get out of there!!”

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume14 Chapter2

2025-12-16T05:23:38Z

Churronzon:

==Chapter 2: Divine Slope, Forbidden Book – Magical Exit.==

===Part 1===

In Academy City’s District 7, someone was still fighting on and on, separate from the core of the incident.

That person was Dion Fortune.

“Ahhh, they’ve forgotten me… I just know they’ve all left me behind!! They must have done something about Adikalika since the Earth is still intact, but couldn’t they have launched a group attack to come help me before they left? I am technically the archbishop at the very top of the Anglican Church, you know!?”

A scraping sound came from a short distance away. A giant black cat stood more than two meters tall there. The bizarre beast appeared to be drawn with black paint and it was ridden by a magician in mourning clothes.

Moina Mathers.

She was undeniably a formidable foe. After all, that official member of the Golden cabal, once called the largest in the world, had been fighting for hours now, but the battle still wasn’t over. Even though an average magician who be delighted to be referred to as “first rate” would have been killed instantly.

(This is bad. I know Coronzon is our top priority, but I can’t just leave her out here.)

The enemy said nothing.

Seated atop the black cat that had to be more than two meters tall, Moina Mathers made some complex movements with her fingertips.

Like a magic trick, countless cards appeared and were then pinned in midair.

The cards were not as complex as tarot. They only depicted a combination of basic symbols like circles and triangles.

These cards could express anything in the world using a combination of a primary element and a secondary element.

Dion Fortune’s eyes widened when she saw the dancing colors.

“Geh, are those tattva cards!?”

The mourning clothes woman’s lips writhed.

She produced a voice.

“Apas of Tejas.”

With a roar, a fireball more than a meter in diameter consumed oxygen and rushed toward Dion Fortune.

This had been referenced in the Golden cabal’s official texts, but it was in fact a controversial text that had been officially adopted at one point but then rejected within the cabal. (From the perspective of Western Europe in the 19th century,) India, Tibet, and the East in general were utopias of miracles and the mystical! …But Mathers hated that view, so he took the unusual step of writing a serious warning against the use of the tattvas due to their Eastern origins.

(She’s an artist and a clairvoyance expert. This wife probably did write a lot about the tattvas.)

However, the fireball was approaching slowly enough to see it coming.

Dion Fortune held her black box out in front of her.

If any kind of magic entered that special spiritual item, its data would be randomly rearranged, changing it into something else entirely. That meant it could rob most any attack spell of its lethality, but…

(Would ''the'' Moina Mathers really be satisfied with an explosive that moved this slow? Uh, oh. She intentionally combined multiple elements in this one spell, so even if my box consumes the primary element of Tejas, will the secondary element of Apas still explode?)

“Wahhh!!”

She couldn’t let herself be caught by such obvious bait.

Dion Fortune quickly got down on the red snow to dodge.

The fireball passed by barely above her head before exploding and toppling a wind turbine behind her.

With the tattvas, it was thought the world was constructed of five simple elements, but it was incredibly difficult to extract those elements in their pure form. That was why the elements were used in combination, like Apas of Tejas or Prithivi of Vayu.

(Kind of like a different version of Western-loving Mathers’s Hot and Dry or Cold and Wet!)

Dion Fortune raised her head from the red snow and shouted.

“Argh, you really had to use the tattvas, huh!? Are you intentionally using your husband’s doubts and detours as a weapon!? How much of a cruel wife are you!?”

And…

(If a pawn created by Coronzon can use the tattvas, then Coronzon must know how to use them too.)

She had a bad feeling about this.

The tattva cards depicted a combination of a primary element and a secondary element. They were a spiritual item that provided visual support for sending your mind into a deeper state. Moina was using them in a physical and offensive way, but she was doing that by pushing her own mind to extract the necessary spell from within herself.

That made this a tool specialized for manipulating non-physical energy and for breaking down the world into five elements and managing it in that form.

What was the worst thing an inhuman demon could do using the tattvas?

Dion Fortune thought she knew.

“Oh, no. If she breaks herself down into her component elements and remakes that into pure Telesma energy…could she escape anywhere on the Earth through the ley lines!?”

===Part 2===

They went back into the department store so they get out of the January chill while they thought.

Coronzon was trying to magically escape Academy City using something called a ley line rather than physically crossing the wall.

Kamijou and the others knew that now.

But where in the city would she perform that major ceremony? Now that they had lost track of her, they had to get back on her trail. But how could they do that?

They didn’t even know what district she had escaped to.

“The girl can help!” Alice Anotherbible volunteered. “The girl will divine her location! But, but! She would feel lonely doing it alone, so will someone good with magic help?”

That ruled out Kamijou. Imagine Breaker was never going to help with something like this. And Mikoto visibly cringed at the very idea of relying on divination here, so she was out too.

…But he couldn’t get a read on Takitsubo’s stance. She always had a blank expression and he couldn’t tell if her staring eyes were a sign of agreement or rejection.

The pointy-haired boy tilted his head in the women’s clothing section.

“Eh? You can use Alice in Wonderland for divination?”

“You can use any book, Touma. Haven’t you heard of bibliomancy? You flip through a thick book and place your finger on a random page. Then you apply the passage found there to the problem you’re facing to find an answer.”

Why would he have hard of something like that?

On his shoulder, Othinus continued the conversation like all of this was normal.

“As a piece of nonsense literature, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland tends to be associated with mystical matters, including this sort of divination.”

“So, Touma, it should be a good fit here. It’s also well known.”

“That’s not what the girl is doing! We want to know where to go next, right? That means we want a number from 1 to 23, not a literary passage.”

So the district number?

But how would you use Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to search for a number?

“Playing cards, right?” said an exasperated Anna Sprengel.

Her exasperation was not directed at Alice for the suggestion. It was directed at Kamijou for not figuring it out right away. And it was quite strong.

“Fool. Gambling, by its nature, is often associated with divination. Playing cards are no exception. For a familiar example, playing solitaire on your own is practically a form of divination already.”

This was apparently a slightly more complicated version of solitaire.

Alice clapped her hands and spread them apart, causing playing cards to spill out from the space between her palms. They scattered atop a glass showcase.

Index and Anna Sprengel joined Alice in organizing the cards. After forming a few triangles reminiscent of bowling pin formations, Alice flicked away the unneeded cards, formed new triangles…and repeated the process a few times.

“Human. In this case, you can ignore the suits and focus only on the numbers,” advised Othinus from his shoulder.

In the end, only two cards remained.

Index identified them.

“10 and 10.”

“Wait, so is that the answer? But if it’s District 10, why is there two of them?”

“If you rush to the answer in your ignorance, I will stomp on your crotch, fool. She said the answer would be ''a'' number, remember? But playing cards only go from 1 to 13, so a single card can’t indicate a number higher than that. And playing cards have no zero. So this is the only way to output the answer.”

“This is the answer here. You only have to add the two numbers.”

“Then…Coronzon is in ''District 20''?”

As soon as Kamijou said this, looking thoughtful…

''Ba-zap!!!

“Whoa!?” shouted Index.

The roar was loud enough to make you flinch even at a distance. It resembled electrical sparks. He couldn’t be certain, but was this really safe? If Anna Sprengel hadn’t grabbed Index’s hand and pulled her away at the last second, would they both have been turned to charcoal?

Alice Anotherbible, however, simply smiled.

Only she was unfazed after being exposed to that effusion of power.

“Yay, now we know where to go next!”

“…”

Alice really was special. Her power was extraordinary enough on its own, but nothing good came of incorporating it into ordinary magic. While it was normal for Alice herself, everyone else had to endure that fearsome strength.

===Part 3===

“Ughhh, I’m so hungry… You Amakusas have a lot of Eastern stuff for your camouflage, right? Do the Flying Alms Bowl.”

“The Flying Alms Bowl is not like an app-based bike delivery service. Here, Index, I do have a chocolate bar.”

“Yay!” shouted Index, raising her arms in celebration and running off for a late-night snack. It was past 1 AM. Did she feel no guilt eating chocolate at this hour?

Kamijou’s visible confusion elicited an exasperated sigh from Othinus on his shoulder.

“The Flying Alms Bowl is a spell that Buddhist monks up in the mountains could use to send just their alms bowl flying out to the city to receive pindapata. And since I know you’re going to ask, pindapata is the practice of people offering food to monks.”

“Wait, so there’s magic that brings food to you?”

“So the basic idea of a delivery drone has existed for centuries, huh? It just took a while before they had the physics and science to pull it off.”

Mikoto sounded impressed in her own way. Also, pindapata was a form of charity, so it was free. The ancient people sure came up with some neat ideas.

Then it occurred to Kamijou this probably meant he had mentally recovered enough to begin using his imagination again.

They hadn’t lost track of Coronzon. There was still hope.

Here in District 20.

Index tilted her head.

“Hey, Touma? What kinds of things do they have here?”

“I think it’s mostly sports stuff. Baseball, soccer, basketball, and more.”

“It’s more than just hard fields and courts. The place is filled with huge stadiums and domes, including indoor pools and skating rinks,” elaborated mourning clothes Mikoto.

Takitsubo was viewing a nearby guide map. With her head tilted. She wore a track suit, but she may not have been a very athletic person.

“That would provide plenty of locations capable of hiding a large-scale ceremony,” said Kanzaki, hiding frustration behind her polite tone.

She may have realized just how hard a search this was going to be.

“If Board Chairman Accelerator were awake, we could have used the satellites,” said Kihara Noukan.

That would have helped a lot. The satellite images could have ruled out the non-domed stadiums, but they didn’t have what they didn’t have.

They would have to do it themselves.

Instead of using the obvious borderline of the wall, Coronzon planned to escape the city by melting into a…ley line? Well, into the ground. Kamijou didn’t know enough about magic to even guess at how long that would take.

But if they didn’t find her as soon as possible, they could be too late.

Not knowing only made him more antsy.

However, checking every single stadium in the entire district would be far too inefficient. He could see so many from here alone. He never knew you could have too many landmarks.

“We’ve reached District 20 too.”

He heard a voice and Kanzaki held something to her ear.

“Wh-what is that? I though it was weird before…but now I’m certain of it: that isn’t a phone!”

“It’s a communication spiritual item.”

Index’s explanation probably didn’t explain anything for Mikoto.

The paper charm – communication spiritual item? – in Kanzaki’s hand produced the familiar voice of the Bologna Succubus. It was apparently the Amakusa style to attach it to the back of a phone so it would be less conspicuous.

“Hey, witch hunt team, you tell that lad there’s nothing to report from up here. No sign of Coronzon. …The Anti-Skill helicopter is gone, so are we the only ones in the air any longer?”

“After everything that happened in District 19, I imagine anything that can fly is busy providing disaster relief or transporting supplies.”

The conversation suddenly ended after that comment from Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, who was presumably dangling down with the Bologna Succubus.

They were cut off by a tremendous noise that made Kamijou cover his ears.

“What the hell was that!?”

“An interception spell,” muttered Othinus.

“Flying with magic is just too dangerous!” shouted Index.

“Ksshh! We were brought down by an interception spell, but that means she’s nearby. Coronzon is definitely in District 20!! And if she doesn’t want us spying from the sky, ksshh, she’s not in a roofed dome or an indoor stadium! Look for the outdoor stadiums with nothing covering them!!”

“Hey! You crashed, right!? Are you okay!? Please tell me you are!”

“I don’t know what you’re expecting from a demon like me, but quit it. We can’t fly anymore, but we’ll catch up soon. We can run on the ground, so don’t worry!!”

“Damn you, sex demon. I know my coat is sturdy, but get your ass off it! Kiiii! You do not meet my salvation conditions, so you do not get to use me as a chair!!”

They seemed to be doing well.

The sounds of a scuffle coming through suggested they were unharmed.

That aside, Coronzon herself had reacted here. That gave them a huge opportunity as pursuers. They couldn’t waste it.

“So a sports facility without a roof covering it. It must be one of the open stadiums. In that case…”

“Different sports have different magical meanings,” said Index.

“Then what about soccer?”

“A festival held in England since ancient times. It’s the origin of all forms of football. Of course, a festival from the 12th century will either be 100% Christian or have incorporated aspects of other myths or religious events like with May Day or Halloween.”

His casual question received quite the explanation in return.

But she of course had a reason for explaining all this.

“But when we’re talking about sports and stadiums, I would start looking here. The ancient Greeks. Everyone in the world knows the sporting event where people compete for the gold medal, but that was originally held at Zeus’s sanctuary. It was meant as an offering to the gods led by Zeus.”

“If we can swap that name out for Jupiter, there are plenty in Rome too,” said Agnese.

Kamijou’s knowledge of Greek mythology didn’t go much past “that thing used for the astrological horoscopes on the morning news”. Where did Great Demon Coronzon belong exactly? With all the talk of rebelling against god, he had assumed she was a Christian demon, but could she use techniques from Greek mythology?

Mikoto and the golden retriever took a step back when these topics came up.

So it was Index who fluently responded.

“Magician Crowley said there are no such thing as demons.”

“Wait, but he called her ''Great Demon'' Coronzon himself.”

“He also said there are no pure demons. He said ‘demon’ is a word people use when they want to deride the gods of people they dislike.”

“…”

Yes, that sounded a lot more like that human who always took the cynical view.

But in that case…

“Could Great Demon Coronzon be referred to as a great god by some other religion?”

“Fool. Even Mathers rejected that idea. He called her an absolute evil to all humanity who was equally and uniformly opposed even when comparing every last myth and legend.”

“But Crowley supported the idea that she is a relative evil who ''appears evil'' from a certain viewpoint.”

A pure evil that did only evil.

Could such a being really exist?

To him that sounded like a strange magnet with only a north pole.

“People on the side of evil tend to be strict about the rules, don’t they?” said Takitsubo. “They have a lot of inviolable rules and strong bonds with their companions. Mugino is like that. If Coronzon is evil but doesn’t need that solid core, then she really isn’t human.”

But Coronzon herself believed they could exist. Which was the source of her self-loathing. She believed her great power was an irregular “distortion” a lot like a monopole. She thought it could only tear people apart. She thought it was twisted and wrong, so no matter how powerful she was, she could never be proud of herself. …If she could, none of this would ever have happened.

Whether or not Aleister’s theory was correct, Othinus arrived at a conclusion.

“Because she is a demon who doesn’t follow the rules, she might have full use off the techniques and fields not approved by Christianity. The rules don’t bind her.”

Mikoto put a hand on her hip and asked Index a question.

“Look, I don’t get any of this occult mumbo jumbo, so can you just tell us where to go?”

“If she is using Zeus’s symbols, a track stadium. His symbols are the sky, thunder, mountains, fatherhood, and many more. He’s the most important god, so he has a lot of attributes. But in this case, there aren’t many symbols Coronzon can use for her spell.”

Kamijou didn’t even have time to ask why.

Index was the star of the show at times like this.

“Zeus is generally a sky god. But Coronzon wants a way to the control the ley lines in the ground, which is the complete opposite. So we can ignore almost all of his attributes.”

“Hm? If it’s that much of a mismatch, why would she use Zeus in the first place?” asked Kamijou.

Othinus and Index both answered him.

“Because, human, he is the top god. He’s powerful enough you don’t want to reject him out of hand.”

“Not relying on Zeus in a district of athletic stadiums is like trying to win a soccer game without ever touching the ball.”

That made sense.

Zeus was a famous enough god that even Kamijou was familiar with him (from manga and games), so his power would be obvious and great. If Coronzon could use it, she would of course want to, but since he was a mismatch for her current objective, she wanted a connector to link the ingredient with her plan.

…Or something like that?

He felt like the situation was similar to a fugitive getting an airplane but having trouble taking off in it.

“So because Zeus is such an important god, he has a lot of different attributes? Then what part of Zeus is Coronzon trying to use? You said he’s a sky god, but she needs an attribute related to deep underground, right? Then what exactly is she going to-”

“Rain,” she replied immediately. “There’s a legend saying the current world is so full of different gods and heroes because Uranus and Zeus were joined with many earth goddesses through the rain that falls from heaven. …Touma, is there anywhere those intersect? For example, a place where a long waterway for rainwater passes directly below a large track stadium?”

===Part 4===

It was a dreary place.

The room was large but plain. Like a big metal box. And it was chilly.

Isabella Theism, a necromancer with silver hair and dark skin, took a look around.

“Why…am I alive?”

No one answered her.

Kihara Goukei was it? Had that bio-monster transported an enemy who would have died if just abandoned on the side of the road?

Cigarette smoke lingered thinly in the air.

So was that Stiyl Magnus on the other side of the locked door? He showed no mercy. If Isabella took any careless action, he wouldn’t hesitate to burn her away with 3000-degree flames.

(True Voodoo priests are apparently immune to fire, but I’m only making use of their techniques and haven’t mastered it to that extent.)

Besides, there were no gaps in the thick metal door. It had probably been welded shut by those same 3000-degree flames. Only a magician who could burn through the metal could open the door.

Isabella searched through her rags to check on her possessions. Unsurprisingly, all of the obviously dangerous items had been confiscated. However, these rags patched together from the clothes of several dead people had a lot of hidden pockets. She stuck a finger through the sloppy stitching and…yep, there it was.

Something stirred in the corner of her vision.

“?”

She only now realized she wasn’t alone in here. It wasn’t an Anglican magician keeping an eye on her. If it was, they would have stopped her by now.

That meant this was someone else under surveillance like her.

(What is this unnatural lack of vitality? I specialize in life and death and even I overlooked his presence.)

“Who are you?”

“''Hamazura Shiage''.”

Even as he responded, he seemed about as lively as withered grass.

He was Japanese…but he didn’t seem to be one of those Amakusas who Kanzaki Kaori had brought along. There was no scent of magic on the high schooler.

Then why had he been arrested by the Anglicans? He was a completely ordinary person…but that mismatch with his surroundings made him an uncanny sight here.

(It feels like being placed in front of ''too cheap'' of ingredients.)

It was uncanny, but if he wasn’t going to get in her way, she saw no reason to eliminate him.

She had no intention of staying in this prison with a stranger. She pulled out the spiritual item – or really, the materials to create one – hidden inside her rags.

(There’s a chance a scanning spell would detect the faint magic power emanating from a completed spiritual item…but the materials are no more than ordinary goods and ingredients. Slipping past checks like that is so useful.)

“What are you doing?”

“Escaping. I don’t have anything to do here.”

Isabella pulled out a small lime. One with a branch thinner than a matchstick still attached. She sliced it in two without a knife and squeezed one half to sprinkle the juice on the outdoor wall opposite the door.

A chemical smoke burst forth as if she had used a powerful acid.

A hole visibly grew until it was more than two meters in diameter.

That wall was no more than metal. Breaking through was easy if you had the appropriate magical knowledge. Plus, lemons, limes, and other acidic fruits were common components of Voodoo magic. It was used in an emergency antidote for zombie powder and in the lime poison created by combining the various toxins and antidotes found in the lime.

“Stiyl…wouldn’t have noticed. With the thick metal door fused shut, he wouldn’t be able to hear any of the noise I’m making in here.”

He would have any number of ways of stopping her if he did notice, though.

The delinquent-looking boy had a surprisingly mild reaction.

He was imprisoned. He would normally leap at the chance to escape without even considering the consequences.

“What I meant is, what do you hope to accomplish by escaping?”

“No matter what anyone else says and no matter how ugly a choice it may be…I will always do what I think is most necessary. Right now, that means defeating Great Demon Coronzon and bringing stability back to the world.”

===Part 5===

Done talking, the brown woman who reeked of death departed into the outside world.

She likely had something to do.

Unlike Hamazura.

(What do I do now?)

Hamazura Shiage lacked that level of motivation.

He had bet his entire life on Coronzon…and lost.

He was worried about Takitsubo Rikou, but he didn’t think she was in that much danger as long as she was within Academy City. After all, she was a high-level esper theorized to possibly become the eighth Level 5.

If he didn’t want any stray shots, or accurate sniper shots pretending to be one, hitting her, it was best if he stayed away while he was a fugitive.

Which meant…

“Oh, I know. What about Coronzon?”

Where had she gone?

He was worried about her too. She wanted to destroy the current rotten world and create a clean new world. Something must be happening that made her feel that way. What if this world was already damaged beyond repair but that damage simply wasn’t visible?

Then what exactly was happening? He wanted to speak with her.

Despite his earlier strong words, he did want to live with Takitsubo.

So he wanted to know what was going to happen.

However, wouldn’t Coronzon have to be in a dangerous position if he was able to catch up to her in his state? He really wanted her at least to escape the city soon…

===Part 6===

Qliphah Puzzle 545 had returned to the District 10 prison.

The facility doubled as the new Board Chairman’s headquarters.

It was guarded by several layers of thick metal doors, metal bars, and all sorts of sensors, but that meant nothing to an artificial demon who could freely switch between corporeal and incorporeal forms.

“I-I’m back.”

No response.

She may have expected that.

In the single-occupant cell, a frail figure lay on the bed.

Surrounded by medical equipment.

The only sound was a rhythmic beeping and a pump expanding and contracting to push out air.

…His body hadn’t been in perfect working order to begin with. Brain damage had left him reliant on a modern design cane and he couldn’t even understand human speech without the choker-style electrode around his neck.

Even so.

It was far too painful to see him lying in the bed like that.

Academy City’s #1 could not live on his own.

He was kept alive by all the machines hooked up to him.

“Master…” weakly called the demon girl.

“Monitor fragments have pierced every part of his body.”

Even a prison had doctors.

Serious illness did not cancel out a prisoner’s sentence, so in a way it was the natural arrangement.

It was their job to keep the prisoners alive in whatever form it took.

“Some are right next to major arteries and organs, making them too dangerous to touch without care. Removing them will be very difficult… But that isn’t enough to explain his condition. If it were simple blood loss keeping him unconscious, the transfusion should be showing effects by now.”

“I know…”

“?”

Yes, she didn’t have time for sorrow.

The new Board Chairman would never wake up ''naturally'' in this state. That had been obvious at first glance, which was why someone needed to externally induce a recovery.

These wounds were magical in nature.

They were scars of an attack from Great Demon Coronzon, a being beyond human understanding.

That meant magical knowledge was a requirement to heal him.

(I will heal you, so please wait until I can, master.)

Something beeped.

But it wasn’t the medical equipment. It came from something like an intercom on the wall.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 didn’t know if she had the right, but everyone else watched the device from a distance and made no move to touch it. She had no choice but to press the button and answer.

It displayed a familiar female secretary who ordinarily helped with the paperwork.

“What is it?”

“We have a visitor for the Board Chairman. He doesn’t have an appointment, but will you meet with him?”

“No appointment? Then send him awa-”

“He is Oniyama of the Board of Directors. Will you still refuse him?”

A visitor.

And at this precise moment.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 said for him to wait, but when she went out, he was already within the special security zone. Left alone, who knows how much he would have explored.

All of the jailers and guards looked afraid. Apparently it was up to the artificial demon to say this.

“Only the Board Chairman is allowed in here. What are you doing here!?”

“Oniyama Rouze.”

The old man’s eyes shined with the greed of a much younger man.

“I am one of Academy City’s 12 Directors. That comes with certain privileges.”

His words dripped with arrogance.

So what if he was one of the Directors? Just because there weren’t many of them didn’t mean they could enter this place without permission. Just think of the Windowless Building from when Aleister was at the top. No one should be here without its master’s permission.

(Has Academy City collapsed to that extent!?)

Oniyama was the Director with a focus on vehicles, including automobiles, ships, and aircraft.

And there had been suspicions he was interested in expanding into the military field. The military had its own specialists, but those who controlled those unscrupulous military forces – Shiokishi, Nakimoto, Neoka – tended to drop out or be replaced quickly due to that very unscrupulousness. A perfect opportunity for those who were hoping to break into that field.

To be blunt, she had a bad feeling about his presence.

“How bad are his injuries?”

He was too casual.

If Qliphah Puzzle 545 didn’t know Great Demon Coronzon was responsible, she would have suspected this man.

“Why are you here without even making an appointment?”

“I am here to give you a valuable warning, so watch your tone.”

“Nothing you say changes the fact that I only have one master!!”

“My point is that your behavior calls your master’s civility into question. The unintelligent never seem to wait for people to finish, which makes speaking with them so tiring.”

He snorted with laughter.

And then got back on topic.

“The situation is too pressing to wait for the Chairman’s recovery.”

“Kh.”

“Academy City is using all of its scientific knowledge to search for the culprit, yet we have turned up empty-handed. That makes this an unknown situation. And ignoring it shows no sign of improvement. Someone must grab the reins and take control soon. Before serious damage is done.”

He said that like the new Board Chairman’s injuries did not count as “serious damage”.

As it were a trivial matter.

Not worth any concern.

Even though the very top of the city had been directly attacked and remained unconscious.

“…You look happy about this.”

“Surely you jest. I am only doing my job. If the Chairman is unable to fulfill his duties, don’t you think his privileges should be temporarily transferred to a third party? I am not asking for his eternal expulsion from the throne through dismissal or impeachment. I am only suggesting someone else take over his duties until he comes to.”

“You just want the Master Key.”

“Ah, so you read me like a book.”

“And just how many people were you planning to kill using those next-gen weapons!?”

The Master Key looked like a smartphone, but it gave full privileges over everything in Academy City. It was stuffed full of passwords, passcodes, access keys, and other such data.

Including for military facilities and equipment.

Academy City’s functions and military might would eventually recover. If it were handed over to someone else, something terrible would happen. And if it fell into the hands of a Director who knew enough about diplomacy and war, it could lead to a war with any place on the planet.

She was a demon.

She knew just how twisted the world was.

And in that knowledge, she had placed her hopes in the #1. She had decided the world was still worth protecting. So she couldn’t allow the world to be destroyed now while the new Board Chairman lingered on the verge of death. No matter what.

“But the Master Key is a dangerous power. Who can you trust it with, if not me and my knowledge of diplomacy and military matters? Noncommittal Kaizumi? Surely not that pacifist Oyafune?”

“They would be better than you at least…”

“Oh, dear. So you, the guardian of the Master Key, are unaware just how dangerous it is. Listen, ''even someone who doesn’t know how to use it can lose control.'' I was fine with leaving it in the Chairman’s hands since he is the #1. I trusted that someone who has killed so many people would know very well how to handle that kind of threat. But leaving it in the hands of someone who has no familiarity with deadly power would be suicide. Suicide on a planetary scale.”

“Leave! If you don’t wish for the Board Chairman to recover, people could see that as contempt of the chain of command. I will not give you the Master Key. Only my master has the right to grant it to someone else. So please leave now!!”

The old man took a step back without taking his eyes off her.

He was not intimidated.

The smile on his face conveyed a clear message: I don’t even need to return here. You will come crying to me by the end.

“Academy City is a heavy burden to bear. Contact me when you are ready to give up.”

“Leave!!!”

===Part 7===

Footsteps trudged through the snow.

Kihara Goukei was bloody and woozy.

“Ughh, I’m so dizzy…”

She had rescued Urekawa Ousuke, the miracle child born of Academy City, and then handed that goddamn Necromancer to the Anglicans who seemed to have invaded the city (even though they didn’t seem to be soldiers?), but she had gotten badly torn up in the process. Three computer chips, two bacteria colonies, one pea crab, and what else? 99% of the secret ingredients giving her her “Kihara-ness” had been destroyed.

She had only one heart left. That was fine. Everyone else only had one too.

She couldn’t get spoiled.

She was running dry, so she needed nutrients. Her powerful regeneration was working against her. Like this, she would eventually dry up into a husk. Before that happened, she needed sugar, salt, fat, protein, calcium, various vitamins and minerals, and more.

(Why do all the restaurants have to close early today of all days? There would usually be at least an izakaya or family restaurant open.)

“Oh.”

She spotted a vending machine.

The small glowing display shined bright in the darkness. It actually had power.

(Oui, oui. Vending machines are cleverly designed to continue functioning even after a fire or other disaster. Oh, I’m saved.)

And it wasn’t a drink or bread machine. It was one of the unique varieties you spotted from time to time. Specifically, this odd kind of vending machine that sold things like wagyu sukiyaki meals on the side of the street. And one of the large sample photo on this one showed…

“On this freezing night with my breath visible before me I find…ramen!! Oh, that has such a sinful ring to it. But I must do this to regain what my body has lost. How merveilleuse it is to have an actual excuse. Hwa ha ha ha ha ha! Behold, world!! I choose the piping hot tonkotsu ramen!! I am freed from all guilt as I ingest this unhealthy meal in the middle of the night!!!”

Even among the Kiharas, facing your own death was something only an oddity could do. It was a good thing the vending machine let you pay with a train card. …All of her paper money would have absorbed too much blood by this point.

A clunking sound came from the machine.

(Oh, that sounds harder than I would expect.)

With a noodles vending machine, she had imagined something like a better version of a coffee vending machine: first a styrofoam bowl, then the drained noodles and other ingredients, and finally the hot soup slowly pouring in.

Silence surrounded her.

Nothing happened after the initial clunking.

Kihara Goukei crouched down and nervously opened the overly large door to check.

“Is this…a frozen food vending machine!?”

It was rock solid.

The instructions on the package said you could enjoy restaurant quality flavor after only 15 minutes in the microwave.

Was she supposed to stand around in this freezing weather for those 15 minutes?

All she had was a solid object that could probably kill someone if applied forcefully to the cranium.

“Uhh…”

Yet she really would dry up and die without something to eat. Surrounded by a freezing night with red snow covering the road, Kihara Goukei had no choice but to tear open the package, pull out the rectangular block, hold it in both hands, and gnaw on it. Yeah, it was not a flavorful experience. Sure, it had salt and fat, but that didn’t go well with the ice!! The white-frozen pieces of pork fat were especially bad. Was this some kind of divine punishment?

“?”

Suddenly, she felt like she was being watched.

There was someone, or something, here.

She found the gaze surprisingly nearby. Looking up at her.

It belonged to…a girl of around 10?

“Misaka has never seen someone eat a popsicle in the winter! says Misaka as Misaka checks the package. Tonkotsu ramen! …Misaka doesn’t remember that Gorigori-kun flavor.”

“What are you doing here? And please feel free to call me Madame Gou.”

“Well, Misaka needs to get to District 10, but she doesn’t know where it is, says Misaka as Misaka explains her predicament.”

“Eh? District 10?”

Wasn’t that the district of battles and machos, said to be the most dangerous in the city? And the girl only looked around 10, so what was she doing out alone at night?

(And if I send her back the way she came, um, oh dear. Aren’t those giant bugs and sea creatures made of weird blonde hair wandering around there?)

Kihara Goukei wept.

This sounded like trouble to her.

First Urekawa and now this. Was tonight the night for running into small children? Was it some kind of bonus mode?

“Where is District 10?”

“The complete opposite direction, so please don’t look at me…”

“If you know the way, then tell Misaka! says Misaka as Misaka begs you!”

“One heart. Just one left. Another death and I really will die… I-I’ve done more than enough already, haven’t I? I already saved Urekawa Ousuke-kun in the very middle of the night, so I really want to get home and sleep until-”

“No! ''Help me, Madame Gou''!!”

“Neh heh☆ …Well, you drive a hard bargain. When you put it like that, I can’t go to sleep now, can IIIIIIII!?”

===Part 8===

On the roof of a far distant skyscraper, one of the mass-produced military clones known as the Sisters removed her eye from the scope of a large sniper rifle.

“She doesn’t appear to be a threat, concludes Misaka #10032.”

“Doesn’t appear to be? Are you glitching? What kind of fuzzy opinion is that for a living computer?”

“It is called personal growth.”

She had grown enough to make casual remarks over the Misaka Network at any rate.

Misaka Worst, who was tuned to pick up on the especially malicious emotions within that vast network composed of countless identical brainwave signals, responded with exasperation in her voice.

“This is all because you discussed that stuff on the Misaka Network, you know? Have you forgotten that mini-Misaka is your host and control tower? She can hear everything you say, even if it’s in your sleep.”

“You mean that our ability to control electricity might be able to force open the lock on the new Board Chairman’s Master Key? asks Misaka for confirmation.”

“No, that screwing it up would destroy the Master Key! If it turns out the only way forward is for the #1 to wake up, then of course the little one’s going to try and do something about it. Goddammit, what a pain. …But Yoshikawa’s the real loser here. She’s locked in her room with nothing to do. Cause the great Last Order used her power to hack the electric lock.”

“Then wouldn’t it be best to send her straight there? Also, that person appears to be a Kihara, which should come in handy on the way, says Misaka, providing her opinion.”

“Then are we finally going to stop playing stalker? Misaka doesn’t want to hold onto this sniper rifle in this cold-ass weather any longer. Misaka is afraid her cheek is going to freeze to the metal.”

“If you are fine with that immortality expert getting her hands on clone technology, responds Misaka. Misaka checked her spec sheet and it would be a real pain if she learned to multiply herself.”

“…When can Misaka finally get back to bed?”

“As if you have any intention of doing that.”

===Part 9===

Great Demon Coronzon slipped through the darkness like a shadow.

She had chosen a stadium that was unusually large even among the outdoor track stadiums. Everything she currently sought was contained there. Here she could convert her physical body into a massive amount of Telesma energy. Once that was done, she only had to send herself into the current of a ley line running underground. She would still be limited to the planet, but that would allow her to instantly escape anywhere on Earth, even the opposite side of the planet.

Wasn’t its maximum capacity 255 thousand?

The outdoor type without a dome was easier to scale up in size, but this felt like overdoing it.

Academy City had a population of 2.3 million, so a full tenth of the population could be crammed inside.

Humans were apparently frail beings who were afflicted by loneliness when standing alone in a massive artificial space, but she was a being known as a great demon.

She felt nothing amiss as she walked toward the center.

Other than the wrongness of her own existence.

“Sitra Achra, hm?”

Coronzon rolled that term around on her tongue.

And smiled cynically.

Sitra Achra could be described as the substance that caused evil. The current world, from the tiny humans to the vast world itself, could supposedly be fully described using the diagram called the Sephiroth, but there were some impurities which did not fit into the grand Sephiroth. Those impurities were Sitra Achra. They were ruins – shards – of the old world which was destroyed to create the current one. They were the substance that caused evil. They had no place in the current world, had no role, and should not have remained, so their very existence obstructed the system of the current age. Like pebbles caught in the gears.

The world god had created was perfect.

Things only went awry because of the extraneous impurities mixed in.

(Sounds like me.)

Shadow covered her face as she silently expressed this only silently.

Even though self-deprecation could not turn evil into good.

She had always questioned it.

Why hadn’t she become an angel of love? Or an angel of righteousness?

If she had been…

If she had been given that role…

…She would have poured herself into that work more diligently than anyone else.

If god had known from the beginning that Coronzon would rebel against heaven and turn evil and had let her go ahead and do it because it was part of some kind of plan of his, then she would ''overdo'' the role god had given her and ruin that plan.

God was an absolute being, but he did not save all lives.

Everyone accepted that even their misfortunes would be given meaning and purpose if they obeyed god.

But the very existence of that system meant he had known from the beginning there would be victims. He had known and let it happen. For some grand plan of his.

Coronzon’s role was to tear people apart. Why should she obey someone who had abandoned her?

So she had decided to use everything given to her and ''overdo'' it. That way she could obliterate that heartless plan without betraying her purpose.

She would dedicate herself to her evil identi-

…?

At that point, she tilted her head.

No, wait. She had noticed it this time.

Her memories skipped a few seconds.

“Dammit, not again…Aleister!!”

She held a hand to her head.

She had finally managed to prepare this place for her ceremony, but she would have to leave if word reached Kamijou’s group.

Coronzon started to panic…but then it hit her.

A few seconds.

She stood in the very center of an enormous stadium. She had no computer or smartphone to contact anyone and there were no old-fashioned payphones in sight. So even if Aleister had hijacked her body, he couldn’t have done anything in that time. She could ignore the outrage if it only lasted a few seconds.

On the other hand…

(It’s good I noticed it this time, but was the gap itself longer than before?)

She had a bad feeling about this.

Was Aleister starting to get the hang of it? That concern crept up in the back of her mind. Losing consciousness for even a second in the middle of a battle with her pursuers could be fatal. And even if that didn’t happen, Aleister could attempt suicide if he took control for long enough.

He would do it.

Especially now that he viewed her as his enemy and had killing her as his primary objective.

Directly comparing their specs wasn’t enough to rest easy. Aleister had won the Battle of Blythe Road after all.

Coronzon consciously took a deep breath.

(I need to shift my focus.)

Not only were there other stadiums, but magic materials could be found anywhere. After all, Aleister Crowley had built this city during the confusion of the postwar recovery. It was an alternate form for the Abbey of Thelema. It had been deftly hidden by repainting it all in the terms of science, but it would be hard to find places and objects here without magical symbolism.

Coronzon only had to collect the items that were already present.

She wouldn’t have any difficulty as long she knew the proper way to combine them.

She could begin the ceremony at any time.

The only problem was how long it would take.

…No matter how much she tried to shorten that time, she couldn’t reduce it to zero. And she would be entirely defenseless in that time. She was the Coronzon who had destroyed legendary magicians like Mathers and Aleister, but during that time she could be killed even by an ordinary human.

“…”

Coronzon shut her eyes, held her breath, and searched for any sounds around her.

She was focused on the area outside the stadium.

(My greatest enemy is the time limit. Because I’m sure they’re searching for me with everyone they have. Weak as they are, hiding from them is a pain when there are so many of them. For once I need to look out for weaklings because this crucial ceremony will be ruined if they interfere in the middle of it.)

===Part 10===

When they checked the map based on Index’s advice, the answer was obvious.

Kamijou pointed at a spot on the large map.

“The General Athletics Stadium. …It’s gotta be this, right? It’s a track stadium and there’s a huge underground waterway running below it!”

“If Coronzon is using Zeus symbolism for a ceremony to send her through a ley line, then it must be there.”

The white girl sounded confident.

It wasn’t like they had any other leads to go on, so Kamijou had to trust in this one.

“Fool.”

Someone else called out to him.

Anna Sprengel.

“I double-checked it all just to be safe, and everything the grimoire library said checks out. Her calculations are correct, so Coronzon should be at the General Athletics Stadium. The only question left is if we arrive in time.”

The Amakusas were magicians who blended into modern society, so they all knew how to drive. …Kamijou preferred not to think about where they had procured so many vehicles in Academy City, but it would be best to make use of them now.

And just as he was thinking that, his eyes met another pair of eyes.

But these definitely weren’t human.

They were compound eyes.

A carnivorous dragonfly more than three meters long was gliding at eye level.

It was made of blonde hair.

“Coronzon’s…scouts!?”

“Stupid bug jamboree!!”

He heard an odd voice just before a blonde young woman drop-kicked the giant dragonfly from the side, sending it flying. She was the Transcendent Bologna Succubus.

“Just when I thought I’d caught up on foot, this is what I find? When do I get a breather!?”

“Pant, gasp… M-my coat…is so heavy with…the steel armor and the terrariums…I’m dyiiiiiing…”

Even as she complained, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet deflected the scouts’ attacks with her thick coat. …Wait, did she just protect the Bologna Succubus?

However, squashing a single dragonfly wasn’t enough to turn the tide.

There were butterflies, hornets, stag beetles, flies, and more.

Kanzaki raised her voice.

“If she’s sending these out, it must mean we’re getting close!”

It didn’t feel like Coronzon was trying to lay low and hide anymore. Did she want to buy time even if it made her more conspicuous?

She really was here.

In District 20. Index, Anna Sprengel, and the others had been right.

…The question was whether or not these scouts were passing information back to Coronzon. Either way, it would be best not to waste time here.

“We need to strike before she can get away!!” shouted Kamijou.

===Part 11===

The scouts sent out by Great Demon Coronzon included three meter dragonflies and hornets.

Kamijou immediately clenched his right fist, but nothing would be more annoying than having a group of 20 or 30 drop from the sky all at once. Kihara Noukan turned his way and shouted.

“Be careful. If they grab onto you and carry you up high, you will be playing a deadly version of the crane game!”

He couldn’t let the flying scouts use the powerful weapon that was height.

Plus, the stag beetle ones wouldn’t even need lift him up. They could crush or slice his body right here on the ground.

“Get inside, it doesn’t matter where!!”

On Kanzaki’s instructions, Kamijou and Mikoto practically tackled open the door to a nearby building.

They ran further inside. When they reached a more open space, they found something odd there.

A frozen pool?

No, was it a skating rink?

Kamijou wasn’t familiar with them and had imagined them as something like a massive cold storage warehouse, but was this skating rink actually warmer than outside?

“They’re coming. Those weird bugs are coming!!”

“Wait, Misaka! Don’t use your Railgun down a straight corridor! Are you trying to hit our friends!?”

Lucia, Angelene, and more of the Former Agnese Force jumped on the giant flies as a group. That still wasn’t enough offensive power, but it slowed the scouts enough for Blodeuwedd the Bouquet and Anna Sprengel to finish them off with stronger attacks.

The scouts were powerful. They were, but they weren’t Great Demon Coronzon herself. The scouts made of her blonde hair were not unbeatable!

“In that case…”

“Hm? Lad, don’t let your guard down!!”

A supposedly defeated scout stirred.

No, a large quantity of something burst from the giant stag beetle’s body. Flat ovals about fifty centimeters long poured out like a slot machine jackpot. There were more than a hundred of them and they were all wriggling. And squirming.

There were more scouts…inside the scouts?

And a ton of them!!

“Ahhhhhhh!?”

Kamijou backed away, more creeped out than afraid of the threat they posed. The small scouts leaped at the boy one after another.

Itsuwa sharply jabbed her spear out to guard him, but she grimaced.

“They’re hard. Are they based on parasitic shellfish!?”

“You mean the more enemies we defeat, the more of them there will be? Hard to think of a better way to buy time!” shouted Othinus.

Kamijou’s group would be overwhelmed by the enemy army.

Sounds like collapsing piles of sand came from all around.

“Wow!”

Alice Anotherbible was the only one capable of smiling as they swarmed around her. A normal human would be bitten into tiny pieces if they tried that!!

They would be killed if they didn’t defeat the attacking scouts, but defeating the scouts only allowed them to multiply.

It was a vicious cycle.

…And Kamijou had only thought of these things as scouts made of blonde hair. But he felt pity for them now that he saw them forced to fight, writhing in pain as they burst from within, and releasing a flood of other monsters.

“Fool, now isn’t the time. If you stop, we will be killed!”

Great Demon Coronzon.

Even if she was fighting for her life, she shouldn’t force her own side to do this.

A dull crash broke through Kamijou’s thoughts.

It came from directly in front of him. The skating rink’s wall broke through and a giant rotary snowplow emerged from the side. The row of scouts in its path were crushed and sliced up by the rotating blades.

The fluffy blonde Amakusa was operating it.

Kamijou had seen her a few times before. Wasn’t her name Tsushima?

“Hop on!! Coronzon is our top priority, so we can’t waste our time with these things!!”

There was no reason to stick around here. The giant rotating blades on the front and the snow expulsion device sticking out the side like an elephant’s trunk looked dangerous, but Kamijou grabbed into something like a short ladder on the side. Only after the heavy snowplow begin to move did he notice something.

“W-where’s Index!? And Misaka too!”

“I’m not the only Amakusa. And everyone will soon think to use snowmobiles and other vehicles capable of driving on this red snow. We all have the same destination, so we’ll meet back up with them if we head to the track stadium!!”

A few others managed to jump onto the snowplow. He saw Kanzaki and Itsuwa among them.

A three meter dragonfly was still stubbornly pursuing them, but it was shot down by a beam of light. Neither Kanzaki nor Itsuwa had done that. Apparently another vehicle was following them.

Eventually, no more hornets and stag beetles could be seen.

Kamijou sighed and leaned against the rotary snowplow that rattled along on its continuous tracks.

“Well…it certainly is a good thing that Tsushima was there to help us, human,” said the 15cm god.

“Yeah, it really was. Life is so much easier when you have a capable young woman around. Thanks.”

“…Ohh?” “…Ohh?”

“(Wait, did I just step on some deadly landmine here. And to make matters worse, two of them at once?)”

A secret light shined sharply from Kanzaki Kaori and Itsuwa’s eyes and Tsushima wept in the driver’s seat.

===Part 12===

It was late at night. 1 AM had come and gone.

When you imagined a late night hospital, did you think of a horror story? Or something more risque? After many long years working here, the frog-faced doctor knew neither option was likely. When you worked there day in and day out, even a special location became no more than a routine. The fear faded and any weird expectations vanished.

Of course, he wouldn’t normally be working on this shift, but today was a special day. He hadn’t gotten any rest during the day either.

A young medical intern gave him a worried look.

“You need to get some sleep, doctor. You’re no good to us here if you pass out.”

“If I could get some free time…yes, there is something I should do, so can you cover things here?”

“Doctor!” the intern called after him, but this was his nature. He wanted to save every patient he could.

If Kamijou Touma was already dead, then there was nothing to be done.

But what if the boy was still alive?

Then he was the frog-faced doctor’s patient.

If a patient had received improper treatment, it was a doctor’s duty to save them.

(What a pain. Where do I even start with determining if a supposedly dead person is alive or dead? The guidelines for brain death would probably be best. Or mayb-)

He left the hospital.

And some strange thing attacked him only three steps out the door.

“Eh?”

If he had to describe it, he would have called it a golden crab standing more than three meters tall.

Even after seeing the pincer raised high, the frog-faced doctor only managed to get out a confused sound.

He did not properly understand the danger.

Yes.

He had no way of knowing since he knew nothing of magic, but his hospital was in District 7. That was the area where Coronzon had scattered so many of her scouts made of blonde hair.

And Coronzon had been so focused on escaping she hadn’t actually ordered them to stop.

Which meant they were still acting on orders to protect the ceremonial ground for Adikalika – the former site of the Windowless Building.

A pleasant slashing sound raced out.

The frog-faced doctor did not shed a single drop of blood.

It was sliced vertically.

The blonde hair scout’s bisected halves scattered to either side.

His eyes widened in confusion as a dark, lithe figure whispered to him.

“It is a pleasure to see you again, doctor.”

===Part 13===

In the District 20 skating rink, Misaka Mikoto had definitely seen that pointy-haired boy on the side of a large rotary snowplow.

And it had happened as the vehicle drove right past her.

She had been left behind.

“I want to shoot that idiot so bad.”

She flicked up arcade coins and launched a few Railguns at the monsters as she retreated from the skating rink proper into a narrow corridor.

The more she defeated, the more of them there were, which couldn’t have been much more annoying.

And the initial dragonflies and stag beetles were powerful enough already, so she would be killed if she didn’t fight back. There was no room for holding back.

(Are the others retreating somewhere too? There isn’t time to ask where we’ll meet up next, so I’ll just have to magnetically attach myself to one of the vehicles’ roofs.)

And all of a sudden, something occurred to Misaka Mikoto.

“…Wait.”

(If that idiot is alive, then why am I even wearing mourning clothes? Ahhh, how long am I going to keep wearing this cumbersome outfit? Now I feel like I’ve been making a fool of myself!!)

This was a sports facility, so would they have rental sportswear anywhere? Even a track suit or jumpsuit would be fine. She was willing to ignore how it looked if it was at least warm and didn’t restrict her movements!!

But this was a skating rink.

That meant any clothing would be for skating.

Such as a painfully bright lemon yellow figure skating uniform.

“U-um, would you call this a skating dress?”

It wouldn’t restrict her movements since it was designed for sports use. Combined with the bladeless shoes meant for the staff, she would have no trouble moving around. At the very least, she would have a much easier time of it than in this Japanese clothing. But why did it have to have a miniskirt? Or should she think of it more like a swimsuit’s pareo? Either way, it wasn’t something for walking around town in!

“B-but it’s so cold! What choice do I have!?”

She had decided herself she was willing to ignore how it looked.

It would certainly protect her from the biting chill of the January night.

It left less skin exposed than she had expected. Because it covered her with a skin-colored material.

But that was a problem of its own. The thin synthetic fiber was like wearing a full-body stocking. A terrifying thought for someone who tended to get zappy at the drop of a hat!

===Part 14===

Kamijou and the others arrived at a dark shape so large they truly had to look up to see it all.

This was the General Athletics Stadium.

Its size was apparent even from the outside.

Its diameter alone had to be hundreds of meters.

Instead of a dome covering it, it was apparently an outdoor stadium. Still, tall walls surrounded it on all sides. Those would be for the tiered seating, but they were just as tall as a four story building. So the same as a school building. This meant there was no seeing inside from out here.

Several other vehicles joined the rotary snowplow operated by Tsushima.

Index and Misaka Mikoto were among them.

“Thank good- woah! Misaka, what are you wearing!?”

“Don’t look at me!! Don’t look at my new and improved flavor with 20% extra at the same great price!!”

Her retort was as unusual as her outfit.

Was this the higher rarity version that showed more skin, or had she been unable to bear the cold and chose to rely on a figure skating outfit? He wished she would stop tugging down on the miniskirt-like part because that only drew his eye there all the more.

The Bologna Succubus and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet were both tilting their heads (in friendly synchronization?). …Yeah, they probably wouldn’t get what the big deal was when they had no trouble walking around in the frigid January night in their underwear or a naked apron.

But focusing on this wasn’t going to lead them to Coronzon.

Kamijou was curious about something.

“The tall walls keep us from seeing inside. I hope that also means Coronzon can’t see out.”

“Does it mean that? Wouldn’t a great demon be able to use clairvoyance or remote viewing?”

Tracking expert Takitsubo brought up a difficult topic.

“In modern Western magic, clairvoyance isn’t a means of seeing the contents of a closed envelope. It’s a ceremony used for spiritual meditation.”

Kanzaki provided an explanation, but it was hard to grasp without a solid foundation in the magic side.

She had spread out a large map, probably a privilege she had gained by taking control of the city. That she went to the trouble of printing out a paper copy seemed to show she still wasn’t used to the science side, though.

“It was fortunate we could get our hands on the official blueprints. Our numbers work in our favor. First, we should station personnel at each exit. There are more than 20 official gates for spectators and the real number is even greater due to the unofficial entrances for athletes and staff. With the exits blocked, we can begin exploring inside. Once we know where Coronzon is inside the large stadium and how she has modified it for her ceremony, we can launch our attack.”

“Coronzon should be defenseless while she works,” added Index. “Even if we can’t win a straight fight, we should be able to win right now.”

They could win?

Then why not charge in right this instant?

Kamijou couldn’t believe they would stay out when they knew she was in there.

Othinus must have sensed his impatience because she made a piercing comment from his shoulder.

“Wait, human. If Coronzon detects us and runs off, this will all have been a waste of time.”

“Either way, we should carefully investigate the situation inside and gather what information we can. We can always make our attack after all escape routes we are aware of have been covered.”

Kamijou was a little surprise to find Anna Sprengel advocating the cautious option.

Had that wicked woman learned how frightening it was to have everything fall apart at the last second?

“But can we really wait around that long? There’s that ley line thing, right? That direct route running underground that only the great demon can use. We can have her surrounded as much as we want – it won’t matter if she just teleports out of here!”

“Failure puts the entire human race at risk. Great Demon Coronzon will be able to do more than just this.”

Was that why she didn’t want anyone spying on her from the sky?

After giving a skeptical look at the Bologna Succubus (or her clothing more likely), Kanzaki nodded in agreement.

“We mustn’t forget that she will have escaped if she physically crosses the city wall.”

“But we don’t know the time limit!!”

“It won’t be in the next 5 or 10 minutes at least. That gives us time to take it slow, human.”

===Part 15===

“Hm.”

Great Demon Coronzon put a hand on her hip and observed her surroundings.

She stood at the very center of the enormous stadium.

“That completes the ceremonial ground. And the attribute extracted from the stadium as a whole gives me what I need. Direction, time, number…and the actual spiritual item in my hands: the tattva cards.”

She held a few colorful cards.

However, these cards were not historical antiques.

They were only symbols meant to help one enter the special mental state of meditation, so as long as the colors and symbols were correct, the material was immaterial. They were in fact made by coloring cardstock with thick permanent markers she had acquired after breaking the metal shutter covering a stadium shop. (There was probably a demand for materials that spectators could use to make placards or to draw their team’s logo on their face.)

Perhaps the stadium functioned like a giant magical circle with the cards acting as a control medium like a mouse or keyboard.

Coronzon had a physical body, but her true essence was a collection of Telesma energy. Unlike the pure angels, she was a mixture of different elements, which could be a pain, but by breaking them apart, she too could be handled as pure energy.

That meant she could inject herself into a weapon or armor or she could be carried around inside a thin talisman.

Or she could send herself through the ley lines to instantly travel to the other side of the planet.

“Now, time to begin,” she whispered.

===Part 16===

Kamijou was anxious.

Great Demon Coronzon was inside there, but the great size of the stadium worked against them. With more than 20 public gates, entering the wrong way would give Coronzon a chance to escape out a different one.

They needed to know her exact location before heading in.

…He understood the Anglicans’ point, but that didn’t mean he liked it. No matter how well they prepared themselves, Coronzon would disappear if they didn’t arrive in time. Then the world’s doom would begin on the other side of the planet. Coronzon would be able to choose any location she liked, so she could ensure the optimal conditions for herself. The next time would be far worse. Everything might truly be destroyed.

Next to him, Index spoke up. Addressing Kanzaki.

“Are you going to run a search from the outside? Isn’t that dangerous too?”

“It is. She could detect the magic power of a normal through-walls scan. However, we Amakusas have specialized in hiding our faith to avoid persecution, so we know a few tricks we can use.”

Kamijou and Mikoto had no clue what the Amakusas were working on with such determined looks on their faces. At this point, Index and her 103,001 memorized grimoires was the only person they could rely on.

She got it right on the first guess.

“The Maria Kannon?”

“This isn’t how they were originally used, but they were designed to look like an ordinary Buddhist figure while revealing its true face as the Virgin Mary to anyone who knew what to look for. By intentionally taking a broad interpretation of that concept, it can be remade into a camouflage-breaking searching spell to locate that which is hidden.”

===Part 17===

In the very center of the spacious stadium, Great Demon Coronzon sat quietly, regulated her breathing, and placed her index finger against one of the toxically colorful cards lined up on the ground.

Something felt off.

A sensation like a finger pressed between her eyes caused a tingling in the center of her head. Even though she was the one reaching out her finger. No, it was meaningless to think of it in that way.

The two were linked.

To touch it was to be touched.

The line between the self and the other – between the inner world and the outer world – was blurring.

The core of her body distorted. She was uncertain where she was even sitting.

“Kh.”

Her head wobbled. A vertiginous fluctuation interrupted her thoughts.

This was an Eastern mystical philosophy from ancient India.

She knew it wasn’t a good fit for her. A pure and proper angel never could have done it. But she was an impure and wicked being known as a great demon. And the Crowley system said every from of the mystical could be incorporated into your own spells if you reinterpreted it with your own logic. The wise would not give up just because they reached an impasse. They would use the discovery of that impasse to further elevate themselves.

She took deep breaths.

She consciously guided her thoughts toward stability.

She needn’t think of purifying herself.

There didn’t have to be just one answer.

The tattva cards did not work with pure elements in the first place.

Mathers had warned that meditation using those painfully colorful cards could cause intense anxiety or headaches for a mere human if used incorrectly. So how much worse would the damage from failure be for Coronzon as she tried to return herself to a state of pure energy?

She did not approach the true essence of this Eastern mystical philosophy.

The tattva cards were no more than tools used for control. That would have been how the Golden cabal used them too. They were valuable when it came to understanding the five elements, but there would be discrepancies between the cabal’s manual and the actual Eastern philosophy.

(The work has just passed 50%. That would explain why this inner fear and anxiety is taking on such concrete form.)

Coronzon did not move her eyes.

She had to focus her whole mind on ascending straight up.

Thus, any trivial distractions and detours could end up tearing her ego apart.

So she always stared straight ahead, using only the corner of her vision to watch how her own shadow wavered and thinned.

It was progressing well.

Once her shadow fully vanished, she would have also ''physically'' disappeared from Academy City.

The destruction of the world was within reach.

===Part 18===

“How is that search spell going!?” shouted Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

“I-it just passed 70%!” nervously reported Itsuwa.

70%.

That was more than halfway done, but Kamijou and the others didn’t know Coronzon’s status. If she was even a single percentage point ahead of them, they wouldn’t finish in time. It was possible the Anglicans would fully surround the stadium and rush in only to find Coronzon had already vanished.

Othinus sighed from Kamijou’s shoulder.

“There’s no need to wait until it’s 100% complete. We know Coronzon is in this building. So if we attack the small unsearched spots, we can confirm her location by sight.”

“How much of the stadium do you think those ‘small spots’ cover?” strongly retorted Kanzaki. “The search has covered 70% or maybe 80%. We’re risking our lives going in, so we want a little more assurance than that!!”

“What do you think, Touma?” asked Index.

“Hm? We should go in now! Right now!!”

He had no idea why an outsider like him had been asked for his opinion on a magical matter, but he gave his answer right away.

“Tsujiura,” said Index. “Kushiura and Qiu Xiang Bu also work. Those are Eastern, so the Amakusas should be able to use them too.”

“I see. So the idea that the first thing said by someone ignorant of the topic at hand can be used for divination,” said Kanzaki, sounding impressed.

In this case, Kamijou’s ignorance of magic gave his words meaning.

…He felt like this was declaring him useless in this fight, which seemed kind of insulting, but if the experts would listen to what he had to say, he didn’t care why.

Whatever the case, Kamijou’s words set them all into motion.

“Kanzaki will join one of the Amakusa teams, I guess. Okay, Alice!! You go lend Agnese’s group a hand!”

“Hm? The girl would prefer to stay with you, teacher.”

“Please! And Anna, you go with that team including Itsuwa and Tsushima!”

“Fool. I will step on you later.”

They complained, but they still split up.

Even Takitsubo and Kihara Noukan did as he said. They had to know even less about magic than him, but they were still risking their lives to stop this unknown threat.

After all, there were more than twenty public gates. The Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force would be blocking all of those exits, but they were dealing with ''the'' Coronzon here. Ordinary magicians weren’t enough. Each team needed an irregular member such as a Saint like Kanzaki Kaori, a Transcendent like the Bologna Succubus or Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, or even a special Transcendent like Anna Sprengel or Alice Anotherbible.

Kamijou didn’t see this as splitting up their forces.

Once they entered the stadium, they would converge on Coronzon’s location. He didn’t want anyone dying in the “blank time” until they broke down the right door and found Coronzon. He was sick of Coronzon being able to choose one of them at random for a one-hit kill lottery. Even if one team was unfortunate enough to run across Coronzon on their way in, they didn’t have to defeat her. Kamijou wanted to give each team someone who could let them survive until the other teams arrived.

Mikoto, who always felt left behind when it came to magical matters, suddenly panicked.

“W-wait, what about me!?”

“You’re with me, of course!! C’mon!!”

“Eh? O-oh…okay.”

Kamijou and Mikoto would enter through the closest gate: Gate 15. Neither knew much about magic, but he figured Othinus’s presence would make up for that. Index’s knowledge was the most important of all, so he couldn’t keep it to himself.

Gate 15 was shut with a metal grate shutter and a glass door, but Mikoto only had to inhale and exhale before it all opened for them. And not just Gate 15. All of the shutters and locks opened at once.

Without waiting for the shutter to fully rise, they ducked below it.

They entered a dark corridor.

And ran.

“Hey, human. Don’t get one-shotted here. Even if Coronzon is busy, she could have sent out those scouts.”

Othinus warned him from his shoulder, but Kamijou didn’t have time to respond. If they were even a second too late, it was all over.

His heart pounded in his ears. He felt like he was going to die on his own without Coronzon having to lift a finger. But he gritted his teeth and kept running.

He wouldn’t let her try again at destroying the world.

He would end this tonight.

===Part 19===

(75%.)

Great Demon Coronzon’s voice no longer vibrated the air.

From her perspective, it was less like her body was unraveling and more like the world around her was changing. Or maybe like she was crossing the boundary between phases. Her coordinates remained the same, but the scene around her changed as if flipping over a page.

Perhaps there was no real difference between the two.

The Golden cabal never managed to send their body across. Thus, their experts had tried to separate just their minds in an act known as astral projection to virtually achieve a leap between phases. They had worked hard to peek into another world like heaven or hell. …And as a result, quite a few magicians had failed to cling to their sanity.

Coronzon’s nearly transparent fingertip passed right through the tattva card.

She was more than halfway on the other side now.

The great demon grinned.

(No more physical control is needed at this point. Now I only have to wait for the process to complete!!)

===Part 20===

Kamijou and Mikoto ran down a long, long corridor.

They couldn’t afford to hide their footsteps now.

Coronzon was so close.

“We’re going to come out into the stands, right? How far is it to the actual sports field!?”

“The actual distance isn’t that far, but the stands aren’t flat. Don’t trip and fall in the darkness, okay?”

Mikoto gave him a surprisingly sincere answer.

There hadn’t been any bright beams of light or explosions yet.

What were Kanzaki, Agnese, and the others doing?

They would have entered through all the entrances at once, but apparently none of the teams had run into Coronzon. They didn’t know where she was hiding to complete her ceremony, but she hadn’t noticed their presence yet. That made this their best chance.

If they failed, it was all over.

(We might not win in a straight fight, but what if she’s immobilized by the important ceremony? This time will be different. This is our only chance to settle things with her!!)

The end of the corridor came into view.

Like a rectangular hole cut out of the darkness.

Kamijou gritted his teeth, clenched his fist, and ran with all his might.

He emerged into a silent space. The flow of time ground to a halt.

No one was there.

The place was deserted.

“What’s…going on?” muttered Kamijou, stopped partway down the stands.

He could hear more people emerging from different directions. But that was all. Even from here, he could see Agnese, the Bologna Succubus, and others looking around in confusion on the other side of the stadium. The great demon wasn’t shining bright as she completed some kind of ceremony and Coronzon didn’t began a fierce battle in an attempt to escape.

Great Demon Coronzon wasn’t here.

It didn’t feel like she had fled in a panic either. There was no warmth in the vast space. It had likely been empty this entire time. Coronzon had never been here. They had chosen the wrong location.

Had their calculations been off?

No, they hadn’t been relying on Index alone. It had been a group effort with help from Anna Sprengel, Kanzaki Kaori, and more from the magic side. And they had been certain Coronzon would use this stadium if she was using Zeus symbolism. So how could they have been wrong!?

“Touma.”

A girl from another group joined him.

Index’s usual childlike air was broken by the trembling voice she forced out.

She seemed hesitant to speak.

“Is this district used for any other special purpose? Other than sports!”

“Huh? Yes. It is a district of stadiums and domes meant to hold tens of thousands of people. I think Aogami Pierce mentioned it being the holy land for idol concerts.”

A quiet thud reached his ears.

Index was unable to support her wobbling body and fell back into one of the seats. The cat mewed in complaint from her arms.

“Then Coronzon wasn’t using sports as the symbol for a sanctuary or temple.”

Her lips quivered.

“Songstresses, plays…she was using the performing arts. Which means it isn’t Zeus! And if she is using a different symbol and a different god, she would be in an entirely different location!!”

===Part 21===

Maximum occupancy: 255 thousand.

Coronzon snorted with laughter when she recalled that extreme number.

…A soccer stadium or baseball stadium could never reach that number even with every seat filled. That display was meant for a concert or live performance where even the field itself was filled with seats.

Coronzon was somewhere like that.

(This district is filled with stadiums and domes. To put it another way, most of them are not the designated home field of a pro team whose games you can watch on a sports app. And “just a stadium” isn’t going to be used just for sports. …District 20’s stadiums probably make most of their income this way. I saw through that right away. And a facility primarily used for concerts is not a Zeus-associated track stadium. To be blunt, this is a large facility built for shows, not for sports.)

She didn’t want Apollo, god of music.

She wanted Dionysus, god of theater.

In ancient Greece, sporting events had been held in sanctuaries as a ceremonial offering to a god, but plays and songs had been made as offering in those same sanctuaries. Thus, holding a concert or live performance in a stadium that could contain a large audience was not a new idea.

Greek theater was the origin of modern stage plays. And the original form of that had been a festival held as an offering to Dionysus, god of alcohol and insanity.

That meant his symbols could be extracted from a large stadium like this.

(The work is past 90%. And yet no pursuit has arrived yet. What’s the matter, humanity? If you let me escape this easily, you will be extinct by tomorrow!!)

===Part 22===

So not sports but music. No, theater.

Not a stadium for sporting events but for concerts and live performances.

When they corrected the initial assumption and had Index recalculate, they were given a single candidate.

“The Brilliant Outdoor Performance Stadium. It points north and, if the adjacent park is viewed as a mountain forest, you could extract the symbols of Dionysus. This time I’m sure of it! A god of insanity would be perfect for controlling her power as a chaotic great demon!”

Now that they had a new answer, they couldn’t just sit around.

Their initial wrong answer would have given Coronzon that much more time for the ceremony to break her body down into energy. As soon as she finished that, she would dive into a ley line and escape to the other side of the planet. There wasn’t a moment to lose.

Kamijou and the others hitched a ride on the rotary snowplow driven by Tsushima of the Amakusas to reach the new destination.

It was in the same district.

Driving there, it wouldn’t take long. The giant stadium capable of holding 255 thousand came into view.

“Is that it? Please still be in the city, Coronzon. Dammit.”

As soon as Kamijou jumped down from the snowplow onto the red snow, he staggered to the side.

He regathered his strength, somehow managing to keep himself steady, but he bumped into something next to him.

But not because he had nearly fallen.

“Ugh…”

He heard a small groan.

From Takitsubo Rikou.

She must have arrived on a different vehicle. Kamijou instinctually caught the unsteady track suit girl…and found her body temperature was higher than he had expected.

Not just warm, but blazing hot.

He was shocked.

“That’s not good… How long have you been hiding this, Takitsubo!?”

“…”

She refused to say a word.

She had been knocked out by some kind of attack from Coronzon during the Adikalika stuff. It was a miracle she was even still alive, yet she had joined the chase instead of calling an ambulance. Anyone would be in a similar state after that.

“You can’t go on. You need to get some rest! You’ve seen the way things are, right!? The Anglicans don’t want to torment Hamazura!!”

“You should listen to your own advice, Touma. Stopping Adikalika was more than enough of a win. You’re hurt, so stay here and look after her,” said an exasperated Index.

Even though it was she who had actually stopped the attack after arriving late. She had a perfect memory, so this wasn’t just a mistake. So was she giving them the credit? When he thought about it, he realized Kanzaki, Agnese, and the others hadn’t actually seen the moment Adikalika was stopped…

Speaking of Kanzaki, she called everyone over.

“If the countdown is close to the end, we can’t spend time on an initial search like before. That will mean a greater risk when we enter. Needless to say…”

“Then do we have time to sit around listening to the headmaster’s speech? I’ll steal a map of the stadium with my powers, so let’s get going!”

Mikoto, Index, Kanzaki, and the rest got moving.

In no time, there wasn’t anyone left.

It was so quiet.

Kamijou sat down and focused on taking deep breaths. He wasn’t as bad as Takitsubo, but he had lost his balance earlier. He had taken a direct hit from Coronzon. He wasn’t a doctor and couldn’t even imagine how much damage had been done inside his body, but he knew better than to be optimistic.

Takitsubo Rikou’s lips moved where she lay right next to him.

He doubted she was conscious, so maybe she was having a nightmare.

“…Hamazura…”

“Kh.”

Kamijou grimaced. In agony.

She had to be badly worried about her friend. If she didn’t do something to help out and earn points with the Anglicans, she would lose all chance of negotiating with them. But she was too injured to move.

If Coronzon did escape, who could say where they would direct their anger. Even if Kanzaki, Agnese, and the others fighting here didn’t, the higher ups watching from across the ocean might demand a live sacrifice from those who were close to Coronzon.

Could that be why Index had used such vague phrasing to give up credit for stopping Adikalika?

But it wasn’t enough. Takitsubo wanted something more to push her claim of having contributed, so Adikalika wasn’t enough and she had come with them even if it meant hiding how bad her injuries were.

And unlike her, Kamijou could still move.

He couldn’t push himself too hard.

But he had to make up his mind.

“Okay. I’ll go.”

“Human? …It figures.”

“I’ll stop Coronzon, so don’t you worry, Takitsubo. Don’t forget: winning is meaningless if you die. Your goal is to be with Hamazura, right? Then you need to rest.”

He forced his heavy body up and began to walk.

No, he was trying to run full speed, but this was the most speed he could manage.

Even so, Imagine Breaker would have to be of some use.

Coronzon’s magic was extraordinarily powerful.

Maybe he couldn’t fight her himself, but he could at least help out someone who could. If he could shield them from even a single attack, it might be enough to decide the battle.

He would overturn the game as a wild card.

===Part 23===

Great Demon Coronzon only had to wait. And the time finally arrived.

It was already over.

99%.

Even if someone barged in now, she could break her body down into Telesma and escape Academy City through the ley line before they could do anything.

Her victory was assured. Those humans were too late to prevent their doom. The silly fools should have resisted more.

But then…

“You think so? Then allow me to cause a bit of trouble.”

Her vision shattered.

Black, red, silver, blue, yellow… It all collapsed into a wild dance of colors.

No.

Crossing between phases and breaking herself down may have been the same thing. She had thought so herself.

Which meant it was she who was collapsing.

She could no longer support her sitting position and fell to the side. Something was wrong with her limbs. She couldn’t remember how to breathe. Nevertheless, she managed to gather all her strength and scream.

“A…lei…sterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!?”

“Now, now, Coronzon. You should know better than to mess with anything as dangerous as the tattva cards which even the Golden cabal had to issue a recall for. Don’t you remember what Mathers said? They can cause intense anxiety or headaches if used incorrectly. Why would you visit the mental world after going to the trouble of physically sealing me away? Are you trying to kill yourself? ''In here'', I can still wield some power.”

(Emergency…shutoff!!)

A dull “snap!” came from the center of her head.

“Khah!!”

She tried to let out the breath caught in her throat, but what came out was colored red.

For a while, she lay on her side convulsing until she forcibly suppressed the writhing of every last one of her internal organs. Yes, it was urgent that she accurately recalled the shape of her body. She had already begun to enter the ley line when the magic failed. She had to return to her original body in a hurry, but if she forgot that body’s shape now, she could be entirely annihilated.

It took her a full ten seconds.

Once she calmed her wild breathing and recalled the cycle for inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide, she had reclaimed her physical body.

The tattva cards could cause mental confusion if used incorrectly.

For her, did that mean releasing the sealed Aleister? In other words…

“Dammit!!!”

This meant a change of plans.

She couldn’t use this method anymore.

And if she was going to cross Academy City’s wall for a physical escape…she had no reason to remain in this stadium. She had to leave as soon as possible.

===Part 24===

Kamijou forced his unsteady body to keep moving and pushed open a small metal door with his shoulder.

He slipped through the half-open door, probably a staff entrance, and entered the stadium.

He found a dark, cold, heavy space.

Big too.

…He had apparently entered something like a parking garage. Was it a space for workers located below the stadium? He didn’t know enough to have a good mental picture of how stadiums were structured.

He did have his phone with him, but he didn’t know what was happening inside. The pursuers had to be careful too, so he wanted to avoid causing someone’s phone to ring while they were trying to hide.

“Index? Misaka?” he called quietly.

He didn’t know how the Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force were searching the stadium. Because they weren’t sharing information with him.

He heard some light footsteps through the darkness. They echoed off the gray walls and were moving away from him.

He immediately ran full speed in that direction.

He could tell just from listening whose they were.

“(Human, you noticed how odd that was, I trust?)”

(We all know how powerful Coronzon is, so everyone will be searching as part of a team. So no one should be leaving on their own like that!)

“Coronzon!! Is that you!?”

“You really shouldn’t have announced your presence. Unless you have the supernatural power to kill with words alone.”

The footsteps stopped.

A voice spoke from behind one of the thick concrete pillars lining the space.

A hateful voice.

“I’m relieved. Because you I can easily kill and complete my escape. Now, Kamijou Touma, how do you intend to stop me? Don’t try to tell me that foolish shout was all part of a plan and you have a more troublesome opponent hiding nearby.”

15cm Othinus could not directly fight, so he was effectively alone.

Coronzon had seen right through him.

What about the phone in his pocket? No. He might not have a signal, but more than that, using the touchscreen in the dark parking garage would give him away with the backlight. Coronzon would act before he could call for help.

“You chose this stadium because it was your best bet, right? You can’t use magic to escape through the ley lines now. So give up, Coronzon.”

“Why should I? Great demons are perfectly capable of driving cars. And it goes without saying that ordinary cars can slip right past a scan for magic power.”

Kamijou’s eyes widened.

That was her plan immediately after trying to escape using Telesma and a ley line? She switched gears way too fast.

“How many trump cards do you have!?”

“More than a mere human could ever imagine, that’s for sure.”

If she escaped in a car, he couldn’t keep up on foot. His phone was an iffy option too. So was there nothing he could do? If he shouted at the top of his lungs, the others would surely gather here. He wouldn’t let her escape.

The voice alone continued from behind the pillar.

“How about this, Kamijou Touma? What if you keep quiet and let me go?”

“Why even ask that? It’s meaningless. If you escape tonight, you’ll work to destroy all of humanity by tomorrow, right? Then nothing you could offer me would be worth it!!”

“Oh, you will let me go. Because I happened to pick up a trump card on my way here.”

Someone emerged from behind the concrete pillar. Slowly.

Blonde hair.

A woman.

But that hair was fluffy and only fell to the shoulder blades.

This wasn’t Great Demon Coronzon.

He had only heard a single set of footsteps, so had she been captured behind the pillar?

What was being held against her from outside Kamijou’s view? The feminine lines of her body were trembling and her expression was like a cross between tears and a smile.

He recognized her as one of the Amakusas.

“Tsushima.”

It wasn’t even a case of “move and she’s dead”.

All of a sudden, the red splattered out.

From the side of her neck. Kamijou was an ordinary high school boy without much forensic medical knowledge, but the location the blood was spraying from sent a chill down his spine. She seemed to have been cut by an invisible blade.

A laughing woman stuck her head out from behind the pillar.

Great Demon Coronzon really was a demon.

“Kee hee ha ha!! Protecting human lives is no easy task, is it? Or are you willing to take another tour of hell for her!?”

Coronzon kicked Tsushima’s doll-like body from behind, shoving her toward him.

He had no choice but to catch her. Only a few seconds had passed, but she felt limp and heavy in his arms. She clung heavily to him like a down blanket soaked with water. He pressed his palm firmly against the wound in her neck. How much blood loss was lethal for a human? If he didn’t stop the blood spurting from the side of her neck, she really would die.

At that moment, Kamijou’s vision suddenly went dark.

But not because Coronzon had done anything. It took him a while to even realize that. He had long since pushed his body past the limit.

He shouldn’t have been up and about at all.

“Human!!”

“Kah…ah…?”

He felt horribly faint.

He collapsed and couldn’t get back up. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t move his arms and legs very much. He wasn’t even sure which way was up.

“Kh.”

He held Tsushima tight in his arms. He gritted his teeth and tried to take in as much information on the physical reality around him. Sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch… it didn’t matter what. He was afraid he would pass out otherwise.

“Ha ha ha!! You said it was meaningless, didn’t you? You couldn’t have been more right! Why bother saving a life or two now when I will be destroying the entire world soon!”

No, it wasn’t working.

Even after all this…he couldn’t stop his mind from slipping away into darkness.

He had to avoid removing his hand from that neck wound.

He heard the sound of metal breaking.

Then the sound of an engine starting and the sound of Coronzon driving a car away.

“Wait…Coronzon…”

The darkness took over.

Kamijou Touma’s consciousness fully faded.

“Waiiiiit!!!”

===Part 25===

“Can you hear me?”

Near the center of the open stadium, Agnese heard a young male voice.

Hearing a voice when no one was there was nothing unusual. She was commanding more than 250 people, so she was using communication magic.

But this was odd.

The Former Agnese Force was all female.

“This…Mich………k… I have an urgent message. Can anyone hear me?”

She was using a Roman Catholic communication spiritual item derived from the Barbara Branch. It was made from a cherry tree twig with a few buds attached and it wasn’t all that unusual. …Even if it did seem wrong for nuns to be carrying around tools for love fortunetelling.

The hard buds unnaturally opened below the frigid sky and the flower petals vibrated.

They produced a human voice.

(You’re kidding. Is someone hijacking the channel!?)

“Is anyone at all in Academy City receiving this!? There is something I must tell you immediately!”

“?”

Itsuwa gave Agnese a puzzled look from nearby. …Apparently she couldn’t hear this. That meant it was targeted only at the Roman Catholics of the Former Agnese Force.

Agnese Sanctis frowned.

“This is Agnese Sanctis. Who are you?”

“Thank god… I got through! This is Michael Speak, a cardinal officially appointed by the pope!!”

She was at a loss for words.

…Those were the around a hundred ultra elites chosen out of the two billion Roman Catholics to directly advise the pope. Ordinarily, she would never even directly speak to one.

But his voice didn’t fit the part. He sounded like a stressed young man. He didn’t sound even thirty.

Perhaps his modesty was what had earned him so much popularity.

(Another Michael. And with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.)

“What does a great cardinal want with lowly peon like me?”

“Tell only the Roman Catholics to get out of there immediately. You need to leave Academy City as soon as possible. Your team will obey you if you tell them!”

“?”

She had expected a protest or sarcasm in response, so this came as a complete surprise.

This was advance warning of an attack.

She didn’t know what the Vatican was preparing to do, but she had to assume it was a fairly dangerous large-scale spell. Something even greater than Coronzon’s Adikalika.

“You mean it’s close to being activated?”

“As Roman Catholics, we cannot allow someone as dangerous as Great Demon Coronzon to escape Academy City. If she cannot be defeated on the front line, then the Vatican must reach out a helping hand.”

Reach out a helping hand.

So from their perspective, they were saving lives.

And the same went for Agnese, Lucia, Angelene, and the rest of the Former Agnese Force fighting on the front line.

“There are three activation conditions. First, if you completely lose track of Coronzon and the trail goes cold. Two, at 5:47 AM local time. In other words, at dawn. Third, if we believe a non-Catholic force has learned of our plan and could attempt to stop it. If any one of those conditions is met, the Vatican will activate Saint Georgios’s Fire.”

“Kh.”

The most important condition was the third.

That meant the Vatican didn’t want them sharing this information with anyone else. Even though this would mean the destruction of Academy City. The chance to evacuate was for the Former Agnese Force only.

…Were they being pressured to abandon Academy City and the Anglicans who they had fought and risked their lives alongside?

“We are always watching and listening, Sister Agnese. The physical distance matters little. So do not attempt to contact anyone else through trickery or deception. We will not overlook it.”

(Magical surveillance is a hell of a thing. Although I’m sure it was originally justified as a way for the pure servants of god to punish wicked magicians.)

She didn’t actually know how much she was being observed. The Catholics had been outdone by the other forces so far, so Agnese thought they had to be bluffing to an extent. But this still made it hard to take any bold action.

And she knew what Saint Georgios’s Fire was.

She had heard rumors of it back when she still lived in Italy.

There was a legend about the death of Saint Georgios, or Saint George as he was known in England. When he was being pressured to renounce his faith in a wicked temple, a great ball of fire fell from heaven and blew it all away. So it was a legend of pure attack power.

“That’s a large-scale spell that targets a distant location through the ley lines, isn’t it?”

“Ironically, it uses the same pathway Coronzon is attempting to use to escape. But since we can only use it and not control it, we cannot stop her from using it.”

The Roman Catholic spell was essentially a cluster bomb that detonated two billion explosive flames across the entirety of the targeted city.

And rather than burn everything down with the explosive blasts and flames, it used an extreme high temperature to rapidly alter the atmospheric pressure and oxygen level across the entire area. That meant fortifying oneself behind a shield or wall was meaningless. Because your own body would rupture from within. Afterwards, only a lifeless city would remain.

It was effectively the ideal form of a human killer.

(Now isn’t the time for us humans to be fighting among ourselves!!)

“I thought the pope had learned an important lesson from the trials of World War Three. I can’t believe he would agree to such a forceful solution.”

“His authorization is unnecessary. The cardinals have the right to hold an ecumenical council or election. …And the majority wish to do this. We in the minority have no way to stop them.”

“Doesn’t that seem disrespectful?”

“Abstaining in protest will not change the outcome of the vote. Did I ever say that I like that this is happening!?”

There was real strength behind those last words.

That had to be what he really thought. Which was why it pierced Agnese so deeply.

But even if he was sensible, he couldn’t change what was happening. She could tell that too.

(Well, this is a disaster…)

And there was an issue beyond the number of victims across Academy City.

A more fundamental issue.

“Don’t you know ''a human killer spell won’t affect an inhuman demon''? Sowing further confusion in Academy City will only create more openings in the city perimeter!! You’re playing right into Coronzon’s hand!!”

Apparently Coronzon’s special trait remained in effect.

She tore people apart and obstructed their evolution.

(But I can’t believe it’s gone so far.)

“Sister Agnese!!”

“What do you want, cardinal!? I’m really goddamn busy right now!”

“This is a compromise. As much of one as I could get. The original plan was to immediately activate Saint Georgios’s Fire and I only barely stopped that from happening!”

There was kindness in his words.

But that kindness was unnecessary. Something was fundamentally off about this.

“Don’t tell me this is about wounded pride. Index stopped Adikalika by redirecting it to an unnamed desert island in the Atlantic. The Italian peninsula wasn’t harmed!”

“But Coronzon did launch her large-scale attack spell. And that wasn’t her only trump card. Her power is unfathomable, so she must be destroyed when we have the chance. None of the cardinals can ignore that point. I’m sorry, but that includes me!”

She wasn’t sure what to say.

She understood. Yes, even Agnese was furious. If she hadn’t made a conscious effort to calm herself, she might have left the Anglicans back then.

“Violence is wrong,” he continued. “I understand that. We erred and let God’s Right Seat manipulate us during World War Three. …But this time, ''we are in our rights to retaliate.'' Overturning that idea will not be easy, Sister Agnese.”

(Coronzon. Your mere presence really does make a mess of humanity as a whole!)

The Roman Catholics naturally had a variety of emotions about this.

About Coronzon and about Academy City for failing to stop this crisis earlier.

…Nuclear missiles could destroy the world, so it would take a lot of guts to launch the first one yourself. But what if an enemy launched one at you first? That would lower the mental hurdle for pressing the launch button considerably.

People were easily influenced by the word “retaliation”. And that could burn down the entire world.

“I will do everything I can, but I doubt I can stop this from happening. Sooner or later, Saint Georgios’s Fire will be launched.”

He was one of the sensible ones.

He would truly prefer not to use it.

But that was why nothing he said was a mere threat or bluff.

For the pacifists, nothing was more painful than having to declare that an atrocity would soon be happening.

“So you need to escape that city immediately. It’s a shame what will happen to Academy City and the Anglicans, but it’s too late for them. Gather up all the Roman Catholics and get out of there!!”

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume14 Chapter2

2025-12-16T05:14:08Z

Churronzon:

==Chapter 2: Divine Slope, Forbidden Book – Magical Exit.==

===Part 1===

In Academy City’s District 7, someone was still fighting on and on, separate from the core of the incident.

That person was Dion Fortune.

“Ahhh, they’ve forgotten me… I just know they’ve all left me behind!! They must have done something about Adikalika since the Earth is still intact, but couldn’t they have launched a group attack to come help me before they left? I am technically the archbishop at the very top of the Anglican Church, you know!?”

A scraping sound came from a short distance away. A giant black cat stood more than two meters tall there. The bizarre beast appeared to be drawn with black paint and it was ridden by a magician in mourning clothes.

Moina Mathers.

She was undeniably a formidable foe. After all, that official member of the Golden cabal, once called the largest in the world, had been fighting for hours now, but the battle still wasn’t over. Even though an average magician who be delighted to be referred to as “first rate” would have been killed instantly.

(This is bad. I know Coronzon is our top priority, but I can’t just leave her out here.)

The enemy said nothing.

Seated atop the black cat that had to be more than two meters tall, Moina Mathers made some complex movements with her fingertips.

Like a magic trick, countless cards appeared and were then pinned in midair.

The cards were not as complex as tarot. They only depicted a combination of basic symbols like circles and triangles.

These cards could express anything in the world using a combination of a primary element and a secondary element.

Dion Fortune’s eyes widened when she saw the dancing colors.

“Geh, are those tattva cards!?”

The mourning clothes woman’s lips writhed.

She produced a voice.

“Apas of Tejas.”

With a roar, a fireball more than a meter in diameter consumed oxygen and rushed toward Dion Fortune.

This had been referenced in the Golden cabal’s official texts, but it was in fact a controversial text that had been officially adopted at one point but then rejected within the cabal. (From the perspective of Western Europe in the 19th century,) India, Tibet, and the East in general were utopias of miracles and the mystical! …But Mathers hated that view, so he took the unusual step of writing a serious warning against the use of the tattvas due to their Eastern origins.

(She’s an artist and a clairvoyance expert. This wife probably did write a lot about the tattvas.)

However, the fireball was approaching slowly enough to see it coming.

Dion Fortune held her black box out in front of her.

If any kind of magic entered that special spiritual item, its data would be randomly rearranged, changing it into something else entirely. That meant it could rob most any attack spell of its lethality, but…

(Would ''the'' Moina Mathers really be satisfied with an explosive that moved this slow? Uh, oh. She intentionally combined multiple elements in this one spell, so even if my box consumes the primary element of Tejas, will the secondary element of Apas still explode?)

“Wahhh!!”

She couldn’t let herself be caught by such obvious bait.

Dion Fortune quickly got down on the red snow to dodge.

The fireball passed by barely above her head before exploding and toppling a wind turbine behind her.

With the tattvas, it was thought the world was constructed of five simple elements, but it was incredibly difficult to extract those elements in their pure form. That was why the elements were used in combination, like Apas of Tejas or Prithivi of Vayu.

(Kind of like a different version of Western-loving Mathers’s Hot and Dry or Cold and Wet!)

Dion Fortune raised her head from the red snow and shouted.

“Argh, you really had to use the tattvas, huh!? Are you intentionally using your husband’s doubts and detours as a weapon!? How much of a cruel wife are you!?”

And…

(If a pawn created by Coronzon can use the tattvas, then Coronzon must know how to use them too.)

She had a bad feeling about this.

The tattva cards depicted a combination of a primary element and a secondary element. They were a spiritual item that provided visual support for sending your mind into a deeper state. Moina was using them in a physical and offensive way, but she was doing that by pushing her own mind to extract the necessary spell from within herself.

That made this a tool specialized for manipulating non-physical energy and for breaking down the world into five elements and managing it in that form.

What was the worst thing an inhuman demon could do using the tattvas?

Dion Fortune thought she knew.

“Oh, no. If she breaks herself down into her component elements and remakes that into pure Telesma energy…could she escape anywhere on the Earth through the ley lines!?”

===Part 2===

They went back into the department store so they get out of the January chill while they thought.

Coronzon was trying to magically escape Academy City using something called a ley line rather than physically crossing the wall.

Kamijou and the others knew that now.

But where in the city would she perform that major ceremony? Now that they had lost track of her, they had to get back on her trail. But how could they do that?

They didn’t even know what district she had escaped to.

“The girl can help!” Alice Anotherbible volunteered. “The girl will divine her location! But, but! She would feel lonely doing it alone, so will someone good with magic help?”

That ruled out Kamijou. Imagine Breaker was never going to help with something like this. And Mikoto visibly cringed at the very idea of relying on divination here, so she was out too.

…But he couldn’t get a read on Takitsubo’s stance. She always had a blank expression and he couldn’t tell if her staring eyes were a sign of agreement or rejection.

The pointy-haired boy tilted his head in the women’s clothing section.

“Eh? You can use Alice in Wonderland for divination?”

“You can use any book, Touma. Haven’t you heard of bibliomancy? You flip through a thick book and place your finger on a random page. Then you apply the passage found there to the problem you’re facing to find an answer.”

Why would he have hard of something like that?

On his shoulder, Othinus continued the conversation like all of this was normal.

“As a piece of nonsense literature, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland tends to be associated with mystical matters, including this sort of divination.”

“So, Touma, it should be a good fit here. It’s also well known.”

“That’s not what the girl is doing! We want to know where to go next, right? That means we want a number from 1 to 23, not a literary passage.”

So the district number?

But how would you use Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to search for a number?

“Playing cards, right?” said an exasperated Anna Sprengel.

Her exasperation was not directed at Alice for the suggestion. It was directed at Kamijou for not figuring it out right away. And it was quite strong.

“Fool. Gambling, by its nature, is often associated with divination. Playing cards are no exception. For a familiar example, playing solitaire on your own is practically a form of divination already.”

This was apparently a slightly more complicated version of solitaire.

Alice clapped her hands and spread them apart, causing playing cards to spill out from the space between her palms. They scattered atop a glass showcase.

Index and Anna Sprengel joined Alice in organizing the cards. After forming a few triangles reminiscent of bowling pin formations, Alice flicked away the unneeded cards, formed new triangles…and repeated the process a few times.

“Human. In this case, you can ignore the suits and focus only on the numbers,” advised Othinus from his shoulder.

In the end, only two cards remained.

Index identified them.

“10 and 10.”

“Wait, so is that the answer? But if it’s District 10, why is there two of them?”

“If you rush to the answer in your ignorance, I will stomp on your crotch, fool. She said the answer would be ''a'' number, remember? But playing cards only go from 1 to 13, so a single card can’t indicate a number higher than that. And playing cards have no zero. So this is the only way to output the answer.”

“This is the answer here. You only have to add the two numbers.”

“Then…Coronzon is in ''District 20''?”

As soon as Kamijou said this, looking thoughtful…

''Ba-zap!!!

“Whoa!?” shouted Index.

The roar was loud enough to make you flinch even at a distance. It resembled electrical sparks. He couldn’t be certain, but was this really safe? If Anna Sprengel hadn’t grabbed Index’s hand and pulled her away at the last second, would they both have been turned to charcoal?

Alice Anotherbible, however, simply smiled.

Only she was unfazed after being exposed to that effusion of power.

“Yay, now we know where to go next!”

“…”

Alice really was special. Her power was extraordinary enough on its own, but nothing good came of incorporating it into ordinary magic. While it was normal for Alice herself, everyone else had to endure that fearsome strength.

===Part 3===

“Ughhh, I’m so hungry… You Amakusas have a lot of Eastern stuff for your camouflage, right? Do the Flying Alms Bowl.”

“The Flying Alms Bowl is not like an app-based bike delivery service. Here, Index, I do have a chocolate bar.”

“Yay!” shouted Index, raising her arms in celebration and running off for a late-night snack. It was past 1 AM. Did she feel no guilt eating chocolate at this hour?

Kamijou’s visible confusion elicited an exasperated sigh from Othinus on his shoulder.

“The Flying Alms Bowl is a spell that Buddhist monks up in the mountains could use to send just their alms bowl flying out to the city to receive pindapata. And since I know you’re going to ask, pindapata is the practice of people offering food to monks.”

“Wait, so there’s magic that brings food to you?”

“So the basic idea of a delivery drone has existed for centuries, huh? It just took a while before they had the physics and science to pull it off.”

Mikoto sounded impressed in her own way. Also, pindapata was a form of charity, so it was free. The ancient people sure came up with some neat ideas.

Then it occurred to Kamijou this probably meant he had mentally recovered enough to begin using his imagination again.

They hadn’t lost track of Coronzon. There was still hope.

Here in District 20.

Index tilted her head.

“Hey, Touma? What kinds of things do they have here?”

“I think it’s mostly sports stuff. Baseball, soccer, basketball, and more.”

“It’s more than just hard fields and courts. The place is filled with huge stadiums and domes, including indoor pools and skating rinks,” elaborated mourning clothes Mikoto.

Takitsubo was viewing a nearby guide map. With her head tilted. She wore a track suit, but she may not have been a very athletic person.

“That would provide plenty of locations capable of hiding a large-scale ceremony,” said Kanzaki, hiding frustration behind her polite tone.

She may have realized just how hard a search this was going to be.

“If Board Chairman Accelerator were awake, we could have used the satellites,” said Kihara Noukan.

That would have helped a lot. The satellite images could have ruled out the non-domed stadiums, but they didn’t have what they didn’t have.

They would have to do it themselves.

Instead of using the obvious borderline of the wall, Coronzon planned to escape the city by melting into a…ley line? Well, into the ground. Kamijou didn’t know enough about magic to even guess at how long that would take.

But if they didn’t find her as soon as possible, they could be too late.

Not knowing only made him more antsy.

However, checking every single stadium in the entire district would be far too inefficient. He could see so many from here alone. He never knew you could have too many landmarks.

“We’ve reached District 20 too.”

He heard a voice and Kanzaki held something to her ear.

“Wh-what is that? I though it was weird before…but now I’m certain of it: that isn’t a phone!”

“It’s a communication spiritual item.”

Index’s explanation probably didn’t explain anything for Mikoto.

The paper charm – communication spiritual item? – in Kanzaki’s hand produced the familiar voice of the Bologna Succubus. It was apparently the Amakusa style to attach it to the back of a phone so it would be less conspicuous.

“Hey, witch hunt team, you tell that lad there’s nothing to report from up here. No sign of Coronzon. …The Anti-Skill helicopter is gone, so are we the only ones in the air any longer?”

“After everything that happened in District 19, I imagine anything that can fly is busy providing disaster relief or transporting supplies.”

The conversation suddenly ended after that comment from Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, who was presumably dangling down with the Bologna Succubus.

They were cut off by a tremendous noise that made Kamijou cover his ears.

“What the hell was that!?”

“An interception spell,” muttered Othinus.

“Flying with magic is just too dangerous!” shouted Index.

“Ksshh! We were brought down by an interception spell, but that means she’s nearby. Coronzon is definitely in District 20!! And if she doesn’t want us spying from the sky, ksshh, she’s not in a roofed dome or an indoor stadium! Look for the outdoor stadiums with nothing covering them!!”

“Hey! You crashed, right!? Are you okay!? Please tell me you are!”

“I don’t know what you’re expecting from a demon like me, but quit it. We can’t fly anymore, but we’ll catch up soon. We can run on the ground, so don’t worry!!”

“Damn you, sex demon. I know my coat is sturdy, but get your ass off it! Kiiii! You do not meet my salvation conditions, so you do not get to use me as a chair!!”

They seemed to be doing well.

The sounds of a scuffle coming through suggested they were unharmed.

That aside, Coronzon herself had reacted here. That gave them a huge opportunity as pursuers. They couldn’t waste it.

“So a sports facility without a roof covering it. It must be one of the open stadiums. In that case…”

“Different sports have different magical meanings,” said Index.

“Then what about soccer?”

“A festival held in England since ancient times. It’s the origin of all forms of football. Of course, a festival from the 12th century will either be 100% Christian or have incorporated aspects of other myths or religious events like with May Day or Halloween.”

His casual question received quite the explanation in return.

But she of course had a reason for explaining all this.

“But when we’re talking about sports and stadiums, I would start looking here. The ancient Greeks. Everyone in the world knows the sporting event where people compete for the gold medal, but that was originally held at Zeus’s sanctuary. It was meant as an offering to the gods led by Zeus.”

“If we can swap that name out for Jupiter, there are plenty in Rome too,” said Agnese.

Kamijou’s knowledge of Greek mythology didn’t go much past “that thing used for the astrological horoscopes on the morning news”. Where did Great Demon Coronzon belong exactly? With all the talk of rebelling against god, he had assumed she was a Christian demon, but could she use techniques from Greek mythology?

Mikoto and the golden retriever took a step back when these topics came up.

So it was Index who fluently responded.

“Magician Crowley said there are no such thing as demons.”

“Wait, but he called her ''Great Demon'' Coronzon himself.”

“He also said there are no pure demons. He said ‘demon’ is a word people use when they want to deride the gods of people they dislike.”

“…”

Yes, that sounded a lot more like that human who always took the cynical view.

But in that case…

“Could Great Demon Coronzon be referred to as a great god by some other religion?”

“Fool. Even Mathers rejected that idea. He called her an absolute evil to all humanity who was equally and uniformly opposed even when comparing every last myth and legend.”

“But Crowley supported the idea that she is a relative evil who ''appears evil'' from a certain viewpoint.”

A pure evil that did only evil.

Could such a being really exist?

To him that sounded like a strange magnet with only a north pole.

“People on the side of evil tend to be strict about the rules, don’t they?” said Takitsubo. “They have a lot of inviolable rules and strong bonds with their companions. Mugino is like that. If Coronzon is evil but doesn’t need that solid core, then she really isn’t human.”

But Coronzon herself believed they could exist. Which was the source of her self-loathing. She believed her great power was an irregular “distortion” a lot like a monopole. She thought it could only tear people apart. She thought it was twisted and wrong, so no matter how powerful she was, she could never be proud of herself. …If she could, none of this would ever have happened.

Whether or not Aleister’s theory was correct, Othinus arrived at a conclusion.

“Because she is a demon who doesn’t follow the rules, she might have full use off the techniques and fields not approved by Christianity. The rules don’t bind her.”

Mikoto put a hand on her hip and asked Index a question.

“Look, I don’t get any of this occult mumbo jumbo, so can you just tell us where to go?”

“If she is using Zeus’s symbols, a track stadium. His symbols are the sky, thunder, mountains, fatherhood, and many more. He’s the most important god, so he has a lot of attributes. But in this case, there aren’t many symbols Coronzon can use for her spell.”

Kamijou didn’t even have time to ask why.

Index was the star of the show at times like this.

“Zeus is generally a sky god. But Coronzon wants a way to the control the ley lines in the ground, which is the complete opposite. So we can ignore almost all of his attributes.”

“Hm? If it’s that much of a mismatch, why would she use Zeus in the first place?” asked Kamijou.

Othinus and Index both answered him.

“Because, human, he is the top god. He’s powerful enough you don’t want to reject him out of hand.”

“Not relying on Zeus in a district of athletic stadiums is like trying to win a soccer game without ever touching the ball.”

That made sense.

Zeus was a famous enough god that even Kamijou was familiar with him (from manga and games), so his power would be obvious and great. If Coronzon could use it, she would of course want to, but since he was a mismatch for her current objective, she wanted a connector to link the ingredient with her plan.

…Or something like that?

He felt like the situation was similar to a fugitive getting an airplane but having trouble taking off in it.

“So because Zeus is such an important god, he has a lot of different attributes? Then what part of Zeus is Coronzon trying to use? You said he’s a sky god, but she needs an attribute related to deep underground, right? Then what exactly is she going to-”

“Rain,” she replied immediately. “There’s a legend saying the current world is so full of different gods and heroes because Uranus and Zeus were joined with many earth goddesses through the rain that falls from heaven. …Touma, is there anywhere those intersect? For example, a place where a long waterway for rainwater passes directly below a large track stadium?”

===Part 4===

It was a dreary place.

The room was large but plain. Like a big metal box. And it was chilly.

Isabella Theism, a necromancer with silver hair and dark skin, took a look around.

“Why…am I alive?”

No one answered her.

Kihara Goukei was it? Had that bio-monster transported an enemy who would have died if just abandoned on the side of the road?

Cigarette smoke lingered thinly in the air.

So was that Stiyl Magnus on the other side of the locked door? He showed no mercy. If Isabella took any careless action, he wouldn’t hesitate to burn her away with 3000-degree flames.

(True Voodoo priests are apparently immune to fire, but I’m only making use of their techniques and haven’t mastered it to that extent.)

Besides, there were no gaps in the thick metal door. It had probably been welded shut by those same 3000-degree flames. Only a magician who could burn through the metal could open the door.

Isabella searched through her rags to check on her possessions. Unsurprisingly, all of the obviously dangerous items had been confiscated. However, these rags patched together from the clothes of several dead people had a lot of hidden pockets. She stuck a finger through the sloppy stitching and…yep, there it was.

Something stirred in the corner of her vision.

“?”

She only now realized she wasn’t alone in here. It wasn’t an Anglican magician keeping an eye on her. If it was, they would have stopped her by now.

That meant this was someone else under surveillance like her.

(What is this unnatural lack of vitality? I specialize in life and death and even I overlooked his presence.)

“Who are you?”

“''Hamazura Shiage''.”

Even as he responded, he seemed about as lively as withered grass.

He was Japanese…but he didn’t seem to be one of those Amakusas who Kanzaki Kaori had brought along. There was no scent of magic on the high schooler.

Then why had he been arrested by the Anglicans? He was a completely ordinary person…but that mismatch with his surroundings made him an uncanny sight here.

(It feels like being placed in front of ''too cheap'' of ingredients.)

It was uncanny, but if he wasn’t going to get in her way, she saw no reason to eliminate him.

She had no intention of staying in this prison with a stranger. She pulled out the spiritual item – or really, the materials to create one – hidden inside her rags.

(There’s a chance a scanning spell would detect the faint magic power emanating from a completed spiritual item…but the materials are no more than ordinary goods and ingredients. Slipping past checks like that is so useful.)

“What are you doing?”

“Escaping. I don’t have anything to do here.”

Isabella pulled out a small lime. One with a branch thinner than a matchstick still attached. She sliced it in two without a knife and squeezed one half to sprinkle the juice on the outdoor wall opposite the door.

A chemical smoke burst forth as if she had used a powerful acid.

A hole visibly grew until it was more than two meters in diameter.

That wall was no more than metal. Breaking through was easy if you had the appropriate magical knowledge. Plus, lemons, limes, and other acidic fruits were common components of Voodoo magic. It was used in an emergency antidote for zombie powder and in the lime poison created by combining the various toxins and antidotes found in the lime.

“Stiyl…wouldn’t have noticed. With the thick metal door fused shut, he wouldn’t be able to hear any of the noise I’m making in here.”

He would have any number of ways of stopping her if he did notice, though.

The delinquent-looking boy had a surprisingly mild reaction.

He was imprisoned. He would normally leap at the chance to escape without even considering the consequences.

“What I meant is, what do you hope to accomplish by escaping?”

“No matter what anyone else says and no matter how ugly a choice it may be…I will always do what I think is most necessary. Right now, that means defeating Great Demon Coronzon and bringing stability back to the world.”

===Part 5===

Done talking, the brown woman who reeked of death departed into the outside world.

She likely had something to do.

Unlike Hamazura.

(What do I do now?)

Hamazura Shiage lacked that level of motivation.

He had bet his entire life on Coronzon…and lost.

He was worried about Takitsubo Rikou, but he didn’t think she was in that much danger as long as she was within Academy City. After all, she was a high-level esper theorized to possibly become the eighth Level 5.

If he didn’t want any stray shots, or accurate sniper shots pretending to be one, hitting her, it was best if he stayed away while he was a fugitive.

Which meant…

“Oh, I know. What about Coronzon?”

Where had she gone?

He was worried about her too. She wanted to destroy the current rotten world and create a clean new world. Something must be happening that made her feel that way. What if this world was already damaged beyond repair but that damage simply wasn’t visible?

Then what exactly was happening? He wanted to speak with her.

Despite his earlier strong words, he did want to live with Takitsubo.

So he wanted to know what was going to happen.

However, wouldn’t Coronzon have to be in a dangerous position if he was able to catch up to her in his state? He really wanted her at least to escape the city soon…

===Part 6===

Qliphah Puzzle 545 had returned to the District 10 prison.

The facility doubled as the new Board Chairman’s headquarters.

It was guarded by several layers of thick metal doors, metal bars, and all sorts of sensors, but that meant nothing to an artificial demon who could freely switch between corporeal and incorporeal forms.

“I-I’m back.”

No response.

She may have expected that.

In the single-occupant cell, a frail figure lay on the bed.

Surrounded by medical equipment.

The only sound was a rhythmic beeping and a pump expanding and contracting to push out air.

…His body hadn’t been in perfect working order to begin with. Brain damage had left him reliant on a modern design cane and he couldn’t even understand human speech without the choker-style electrode around his neck.

Even so.

It was far too painful to see him lying in the bed like that.

Academy City’s #1 could not live on his own.

He was kept alive by all the machines hooked up to him.

“Master…” weakly called the demon girl.

“Monitor fragments have pierced every part of his body.”

Even a prison had doctors.

Serious illness did not cancel out a prisoner’s sentence, so in a way it was the natural arrangement.

It was their job to keep the prisoners alive in whatever form it took.

“Some are right next to major arteries and organs, making them too dangerous to touch without care. Removing them will be very difficult… But that isn’t enough to explain his condition. If it were simple blood loss keeping him unconscious, the transfusion should be showing effects by now.”

“I know…”

“?”

Yes, she didn’t have time for sorrow.

The new Board Chairman would never wake up ''naturally'' in this state. That had been obvious at first glance, which was why someone needed to externally induce a recovery.

These wounds were magical in nature.

They were scars of an attack from Great Demon Coronzon, a being beyond human understanding.

That meant magical knowledge was a requirement to heal him.

(I will heal you, so please wait until I can, master.)

Something beeped.

But it wasn’t the medical equipment. It came from something like an intercom on the wall.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 didn’t know if she had the right, but everyone else watched the device from a distance and made no move to touch it. She had no choice but to press the button and answer.

It displayed a familiar female secretary who ordinarily helped with the paperwork.

“What is it?”

“We have a visitor for the Board Chairman. He doesn’t have an appointment, but will you meet with him?”

“No appointment? Then send him awa-”

“He is Oniyama of the Board of Directors. Will you still refuse him?”

A visitor.

And at this precise moment.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 said for him to wait, but when she went out, he was already within the special security zone. Left alone, who knows how much he would have explored.

All of the jailers and guards looked afraid. Apparently it was up to the artificial demon to say this.

“Only the Board Chairman is allowed in here. What are you doing here!?”

“Oniyama Rouze.”

The old man’s eyes shined with the greed of a much younger man.

“I am one of Academy City’s 12 Directors. That comes with certain privileges.”

His words dripped with arrogance.

So what if he was one of the Directors? Just because there weren’t many of them didn’t mean they could enter this place without permission. Just think of the Windowless Building from when Aleister was at the top. No one should be here without its master’s permission.

(Has Academy City collapsed to that extent!?)

Oniyama was the Director with a focus on vehicles, including automobiles, ships, and aircraft.

And there had been suspicions he was interested in expanding into the military field. The military had its own specialists, but those who controlled those unscrupulous military forces – Shiokishi, Nakimoto, Neoka – tended to drop out or be replaced quickly due to that very unscrupulousness. A perfect opportunity for those who were hoping to break into that field.

To be blunt, she had a bad feeling about his presence.

“How bad are his injuries?”

He was too casual.

If Qliphah Puzzle 545 didn’t know Great Demon Coronzon was responsible, she would have suspected this man.

“Why are you here without even making an appointment?”

“I am here to give you a valuable warning, so watch your tone.”

“Nothing you say changes the fact that I only have one master!!”

“My point is that your behavior calls your master’s civility into question. The unintelligent never seem to wait for people to finish, which makes speaking with them so tiring.”

He snorted with laughter.

And then got back on topic.

“The situation is too pressing to wait for the Chairman’s recovery.”

“Kh.”

“Academy City is using all of its scientific knowledge to search for the culprit, yet we have turned up empty-handed. That makes this an unknown situation. And ignoring it shows no sign of improvement. Someone must grab the reins and take control soon. Before serious damage is done.”

He said that like the new Board Chairman’s injuries did not count as “serious damage”.

As it were a trivial matter.

Not worth any concern.

Even though the very top of the city had been directly attacked and remained unconscious.

“…You look happy about this.”

“Surely you jest. I am only doing my job. If the Chairman is unable to fulfill his duties, don’t you think his privileges should be temporarily transferred to a third party? I am not asking for his eternal expulsion from the throne through dismissal or impeachment. I am only suggesting someone else take over his duties until he comes to.”

“You just want the Master Key.”

“Ah, so you read me like a book.”

“And just how many people were you planning to kill using those next-gen weapons!?”

The Master Key looked like a smartphone, but it gave full privileges over everything in Academy City. It was stuffed full of passwords, passcodes, access keys, and other such data.

Including for military facilities and equipment.

Academy City’s functions and military might would eventually recover. If it were handed over to someone else, something terrible would happen. And if it fell into the hands of a Director who knew enough about diplomacy and war, it could lead to a war with any place on the planet.

She was a demon.

She knew just how twisted the world was.

And in that knowledge, she had placed her hopes in the #1. She had decided the world was still worth protecting. So she couldn’t allow the world to be destroyed now while the new Board Chairman lingered on the verge of death. No matter what.

“But the Master Key is a dangerous power. Who can you trust it with, if not me and my knowledge of diplomacy and military matters? Noncommittal Kaizumi? Surely not that pacifist Oyafune?”

“They would be better than you at least…”

“Oh, dear. So you, the guardian of the Master Key, are unaware just how dangerous it is. Listen, ''even someone who doesn’t know how to use it can lose control.'' I was fine with leaving it in the Chairman’s hands since he is the #1. I trusted that someone who has killed so many people would know very well how to handle that kind of threat. But leaving it in the hands of someone who has no familiarity with deadly power would be suicide. Suicide on a planetary scale.”

“Leave! If you don’t wish for the Board Chairman to recover, people could see that as contempt of the chain of command. I will not give you the Master Key. Only my master has the right to grant it to someone else. So please leave now!!”

The old man took a step back without taking his eyes off her.

He was not intimidated.

The smile on his face conveyed a clear message: I don’t even need to return here. You will come crying to me by the end.

“Academy City is a heavy burden to bear. Contact me when you are ready to give up.”

“Leave!!!”

===Part 7===

Footsteps trudged through the snow.

Kihara Goukei was bloody and woozy.

“Ughh, I’m so dizzy…”

She had rescued Urekawa Ousuke, the miracle child born of Academy City, and then handed that goddamn Necromancer to the Anglicans who seemed to have invaded the city (even though they didn’t seem to be soldiers?), but she had gotten badly torn up in the process. Three computer chips, two bacteria colonies, one pea crab, and what else? 99% of the secret ingredients giving her her “Kihara-ness” had been destroyed.

She had only one heart left. That was fine. Everyone else only had one too.

She couldn’t get spoiled.

She was running dry, so she needed nutrients. Her powerful regeneration was working against her. Like this, she would eventually dry up into a husk. Before that happened, she needed sugar, salt, fat, protein, calcium, various vitamins and minerals, and more.

(Why do all the restaurants have to close early today of all days? There would usually be at least an izakaya or family restaurant open.)

“Oh.”

She spotted a vending machine.

The small glowing display shined bright in the darkness. It actually had power.

(Oui, oui. Vending machines are cleverly designed to continue functioning even after a fire or other disaster. Oh, I’m saved.)

And it wasn’t a drink or bread machine. It was one of the unique varieties you spotted from time to time. Specifically, this odd kind of vending machine that sold things like wagyu sukiyaki meals on the side of the street. And one of the large sample photo on this one showed…

“On this freezing night with my breath visible before me I find…ramen!! Oh, that has such a sinful ring to it. But I must do this to regain what my body has lost. How merveilleuse it is to have an actual excuse. Hwa ha ha ha ha ha! Behold, world!! I choose the piping hot tonkotsu ramen!! I am freed from all guilt as I ingest this unhealthy meal in the middle of the night!!!”

Even among the Kiharas, facing your own death was something only an oddity could do. It was a good thing the vending machine let you pay with a train card. …All of her paper money would have absorbed too much blood by this point.

A clunking sound came from the machine.

(Oh, that sounds harder than I would expect.)

With a noodles vending machine, she had imagined something like a better version of a coffee vending machine: first a styrofoam bowl, then the drained noodles and other ingredients, and finally the hot soup slowly pouring in.

Silence surrounded her.

Nothing happened after the initial clunking.

Kihara Goukei crouched down and nervously opened the overly large door to check.

“Is this…a frozen food vending machine!?”

It was rock solid.

The instructions on the package said you could enjoy restaurant quality flavor after only 15 minutes in the microwave.

Was she supposed to stand around in this freezing weather for those 15 minutes?

All she had was a solid object that could probably kill someone if applied forcefully to the cranium.

“Uhh…”

Yet she really would dry up and die without something to eat. Surrounded by a freezing night with red snow covering the road, Kihara Goukei had no choice but to tear open the package, pull out the rectangular block, hold it in both hands, and gnaw on it. Yeah, it was not a flavorful experience. Sure, it had salt and fat, but that didn’t go well with the ice!! The white-frozen pieces of pork fat were especially bad. Was this some kind of divine punishment?

“?”

Suddenly, she felt like she was being watched.

There was someone, or something, here.

She found the gaze surprisingly nearby. Looking up at her.

It belonged to…a girl of around 10?

“Misaka has never seen someone eat a popsicle in the winter! says Misaka as Misaka checks the package. Tonkotsu ramen! …Misaka doesn’t remember that Gorigori-kun flavor.”

“What are you doing here? And please feel free to call me Madame Gou.”

“Well, Misaka needs to get to District 10, but she doesn’t know where it is, says Misaka as Misaka explains her predicament.”

“Eh? District 10?”

Wasn’t that the district of battles and machos, said to be the most dangerous in the city? And the girl only looked around 10, so what was she doing out alone at night?

(And if I send her back the way she came, um, oh dear. Aren’t those giant bugs and sea creatures made of weird blonde hair wandering around there?)

Kihara Goukei wept.

This sounded like trouble to her.

First Urekawa and now this. Was tonight the night for running into small children? Was it some kind of bonus mode?

“Where is District 10?”

“The complete opposite direction, so please don’t look at me…”

“If you know the way, then tell Misaka! says Misaka as Misaka begs you!”

“One heart. Just one left. Another death and I really will die… I-I’ve done more than enough already, haven’t I? I already saved Urekawa Ousuke-kun in the very middle of the night, so I really want to get home and sleep until-”

“No! ''Help me, Madame Gou''!!”

“Neh heh☆ …Well, you drive a hard bargain. When you put it like that, I can’t go to sleep now, can IIIIIIII!?”

===Part 8===

On the roof of a far distant skyscraper, one of the mass-produced military clones known as the Sisters removed her eye from the scope of a large sniper rifle.

“She doesn’t appear to be a threat, concludes Misaka #10032.”

“Doesn’t appear to be? Are you glitching? What kind of fuzzy opinion is that for a living computer?”

“It is called personal growth.”

She had grown enough to make casual remarks over the Misaka Network at any rate.

Misaka Worst, who was tuned to pick up on the especially malicious emotions within that vast network composed of countless identical brainwave signals, responded with exasperation in her voice.

“This is all because you discussed that stuff on the Misaka Network, you know? Have you forgotten that mini-Misaka is your host and control tower? She can hear everything you say, even if it’s in your sleep.”

“You mean that our ability to control electricity might be able to force open the lock on the new Board Chairman’s Master Key? asks Misaka for confirmation.”

“No, that screwing it up would destroy the Master Key! If it turns out the only way forward is for the #1 to wake up, then of course the little one’s going to try and do something about it. Goddammit, what a pain. …But Yoshikawa’s the real loser here. She’s locked in her room with nothing to do. Cause the great Last Order used her power to hack the electric lock.”

“Then wouldn’t it be best to send her straight there? Also, that person appears to be a Kihara, which should come in handy on the way, says Misaka, providing her opinion.”

“Then are we finally going to stop playing stalker? Misaka doesn’t want to hold onto this sniper rifle in this cold-ass weather any longer. Misaka is afraid her cheek is going to freeze to the metal.”

“If you are fine with that immortality expert getting her hands on clone technology, responds Misaka. Misaka checked her spec sheet and it would be a real pain if she learned to multiply herself.”

“…When can Misaka finally get back to bed?”

“As if you have any intention of doing that.”

===Part 9===

Great Demon Coronzon slipped through the darkness like a shadow.

She had chosen a stadium that was unusually large even among the outdoor track stadiums. Everything she currently sought was contained there. Here she could convert her physical body into a massive amount of Telesma energy. Once that was done, she only had to send herself into the current of a ley line running underground. She would still be limited to the planet, but that would allow her to instantly escape anywhere on Earth, even the opposite side of the planet.

Wasn’t its maximum capacity 255 thousand?

The outdoor type without a dome was easier to scale up in size, but this felt like overdoing it.

Academy City had a population of 2.3 million, so a full tenth of the population could be crammed inside.

Humans were apparently frail beings who were afflicted by loneliness when standing alone in a massive artificial space, but she was a being known as a great demon.

She felt nothing amiss as she walked toward the center.

Other than the wrongness of her own existence.

“Sitra Achra, hm?”

Coronzon rolled that term around on her tongue.

And smiled cynically.

Sitra Achra could be described as the substance that caused evil. The current world, from the tiny humans to the vast world itself, could supposedly be fully described using the diagram called the Sephiroth, but there were some impurities which did not fit into the grand Sephiroth. Those impurities were Sitra Achra. They were ruins – shards – of the old world which was destroyed to create the current one. They were the substance that caused evil. They had no place in the current world, had no role, and should not have remained, so their very existence obstructed the system of the current age. Like pebbles caught in the gears.

The world god had created was perfect.

Things only went awry because of the extraneous impurities mixed in.

(Sounds like me.)

Shadow covered her face as she silently expressed this only silently.

Even though self-deprecation could not turn evil into good.

She had always questioned it.

Why hadn’t she become an angel of love? Or an angel of righteousness?

If she had been…

If she had been given that role…

…She would have poured herself into that work more diligently than anyone else.

If god had known from the beginning that Coronzon would rebel against heaven and turn evil and had let her go ahead and do it because it was part of some kind of plan of his, then she would ''overdo'' the role god had given her and ruin that plan.

God was an absolute being, but he did not save all lives.

Everyone accepted that even their misfortunes would be given meaning and purpose if they obeyed god.

But the very existence of that system meant he had known from the beginning there would be victims. He had known and let it happen. For some grand plan of his.

Coronzon’s role was to tear people apart. Why should she obey someone who had abandoned her?

So she had decided to use everything given to her and ''overdo'' it. That way she could obliterate that heartless plan without betraying her purpose.

She would dedicate herself to her evil identi-

…?

At that point, she tilted her head.

No, wait. She had noticed it this time.

Her memories skipped a few seconds.

“Dammit, not again…Aleister!!”

She held a hand to her head.

She had finally managed to prepare this place for her ceremony, but she would have to leave if word reached Kamijou’s group.

Coronzon started to panic…but then it hit her.

A few seconds.

She stood in the very center of an enormous stadium. She had no computer or smartphone to contact anyone and there were no old-fashioned payphones in sight. So even if Aleister had hijacked her body, he couldn’t have done anything in that time. She could ignore the outrage if it only lasted a few seconds.

On the other hand…

(It’s good I noticed it this time, but was the gap itself longer than before?)

She had a bad feeling about this.

Was Aleister starting to get the hang of it? That concern crept up in the back of her mind. Losing consciousness for even a second in the middle of a battle with her pursuers could be fatal. And even if that didn’t happen, Aleister could attempt suicide if he took control for long enough.

He would do it.

Especially now that he viewed her as his enemy and had killing her as his primary objective.

Directly comparing their specs wasn’t enough to rest easy. Aleister had won the Battle of Blythe Road after all.

Coronzon consciously took a deep breath.

(I need to shift my focus.)

Not only were there other stadiums, but magic materials could be found anywhere. After all, Aleister Crowley had built this city during the confusion of the postwar recovery. It was an alternate form for the Abbey of Thelema. It had been deftly hidden by repainting it all in the terms of science, but it would be hard to find places and objects here without magical symbolism.

Coronzon only had to collect the items that were already present.

She wouldn’t have any difficulty as long she knew the proper way to combine them.

She could begin the ceremony at any time.

The only problem was how long it would take.

…No matter how much she tried to shorten that time, she couldn’t reduce it to zero. And she would be entirely defenseless in that time. She was the Coronzon who had destroyed legendary magicians like Mathers and Aleister, but during that time she could be killed even by an ordinary human.

“…”

Coronzon shut her eyes, held her breath, and searched for any sounds around her.

She was focused on the area outside the stadium.

(My greatest enemy is the time limit. Because I’m sure they’re searching for me with everyone they have. Weak as they are, hiding from them is a pain when there are so many of them. For once I need to look out for weaklings because this crucial ceremony will be ruined if they interfere in the middle of it.)

===Part 10===

When they checked the map based on Index’s advice, the answer was obvious.

Kamijou pointed at a spot on the large map.

“The General Athletics Stadium. …It’s gotta be this, right? It’s a track stadium and there’s a huge underground waterway running below it!”

“If Coronzon is using Zeus symbolism for a ceremony to send her through a ley line, then it must be there.”

The white girl sounded confident.

It wasn’t like they had any other leads to go on, so Kamijou had to trust in this one.

“Fool.”

Someone else called out to him.

Anna Sprengel.

“I double-checked it all just to be safe, and everything the grimoire library said checks out. Her calculations are correct, so Coronzon should be at the General Athletics Stadium. The only question left is if we arrive in time.”

The Amakusas were magicians who blended into modern society, so they all knew how to drive. …Kamijou preferred not to think about where they had procured so many vehicles in Academy City, but it would be best to make use of them now.

And just as he was thinking that, his eyes met another pair of eyes.

But these definitely weren’t human.

They were compound eyes.

A carnivorous dragonfly more than three meters long was gliding at eye level.

It was made of blonde hair.

“Coronzon’s…scouts!?”

“Stupid bug jamboree!!”

He heard an odd voice just before a blonde young woman drop-kicked the giant dragonfly from the side, sending it flying. She was the Transcendent Bologna Succubus.

“Just when I thought I’d caught up on foot, this is what I find? When do I get a breather!?”

“Pant, gasp… M-my coat…is so heavy with…the steel armor and the terrariums…I’m dyiiiiiing…”

Even as she complained, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet deflected the scouts’ attacks with her thick coat. …Wait, did she just protect the Bologna Succubus?

However, squashing a single dragonfly wasn’t enough to turn the tide.

There were butterflies, hornets, stag beetles, flies, and more.

Kanzaki raised her voice.

“If she’s sending these out, it must mean we’re getting close!”

It didn’t feel like Coronzon was trying to lay low and hide anymore. Did she want to buy time even if it made her more conspicuous?

She really was here.

In District 20. Index, Anna Sprengel, and the others had been right.

…The question was whether or not these scouts were passing information back to Coronzon. Either way, it would be best not to waste time here.

“We need to strike before she can get away!!” shouted Kamijou.

===Part 11===

The scouts sent out by Great Demon Coronzon included three meter dragonflies and hornets.

Kamijou immediately clenched his right fist, but nothing would be more annoying than having a group of 20 or 30 drop from the sky all at once. Kihara Noukan turned his way and shouted.

“Be careful. If they grab onto you and carry you up high, you will be playing a deadly version of the crane game!”

He couldn’t let the flying scouts use the powerful weapon that was height.

Plus, the stag beetle ones wouldn’t even need lift him up. They could crush or slice his body right here on the ground.

“Get inside, it doesn’t matter where!!”

On Kanzaki’s instructions, Kamijou and Mikoto practically tackled open the door to a nearby building.

They ran further inside. When they reached a more open space, they found something odd there.

A frozen pool?

No, was it a skating rink?

Kamijou wasn’t familiar with them and had imagined them as something like a massive cold storage warehouse, but was this skating rink actually warmer than outside?

“They’re coming. Those weird bugs are coming!!”

“Wait, Misaka! Don’t use your Railgun down a straight corridor! Are you trying to hit our friends!?”

Lucia, Angelene, and more of the Former Agnese Force jumped on the giant flies as a group. That still wasn’t enough offensive power, but it slowed the scouts enough for Blodeuwedd the Bouquet and Anna Sprengel to finish them off with stronger attacks.

The scouts were powerful. They were, but they weren’t Great Demon Coronzon herself. The scouts made of her blonde hair were not unbeatable!

“In that case…”

“Hm? Lad, don’t let your guard down!!”

A supposedly defeated scout stirred.

No, a large quantity of something burst from the giant stag beetle’s body. Flat ovals about fifty centimeters long poured out like a slot machine jackpot. There were more than a hundred of them and they were all wriggling. And squirming.

There were more scouts…inside the scouts?

And a ton of them!!

“Ahhhhhhh!?”

Kamijou backed away, more creeped out than afraid of the threat they posed. The small scouts leaped at the boy one after another.

Itsuwa sharply jabbed her spear out to guard him, but she grimaced.

“They’re hard. Are they based on parasitic shellfish!?”

“You mean the more enemies we defeat, the more of them there will be? Hard to think of a better way to buy time!” shouted Othinus.

Kamijou’s group would be overwhelmed by the enemy army.

Sounds like collapsing piles of sand came from all around.

“Wow!”

Alice Anotherbible was the only one capable of smiling as they swarmed around her. A normal human would be bitten into tiny pieces if they tried that!!

They would be killed if they didn’t defeat the attacking scouts, but defeating the scouts only allowed them to multiply.

It was a vicious cycle.

…And Kamijou had only thought of these things as scouts made of blonde hair. But he felt pity for them now that he saw them forced to fight, writhing in pain as they burst from within, and releasing a flood of other monsters.

“Fool, now isn’t the time. If you stop, we will be killed!”

Great Demon Coronzon.

Even if she was fighting for her life, she shouldn’t force her own side to do this.

A dull crash broke through Kamijou’s thoughts.

It came from directly in front of him. The skating rink’s wall broke through and a giant rotary snowplow emerged from the side. The row of scouts in its path were crushed and sliced up by the rotating blades.

The fluffy blonde Amakusa was operating it.

Kamijou had seen her a few times before. Wasn’t her name Tsushima?

“Hop on!! Coronzon is our top priority, so we can’t waste our time with these things!!”

There was no reason to stick around here. The giant rotating blades on the front and the snow expulsion device sticking out the side like an elephant’s trunk looked dangerous, but Kamijou grabbed into something like a short ladder on the side. Only after the heavy snowplow begin to move did he notice something.

“W-where’s Index!? And Misaka too!”

“I’m not the only Amakusa. And everyone will soon think to use snowmobiles and other vehicles capable of driving on this red snow. We all have the same destination, so we’ll meet back up with them if we head to the track stadium!!”

A few others managed to jump onto the snowplow. He saw Kanzaki and Itsuwa among them.

A three meter dragonfly was still stubbornly pursuing them, but it was shot down by a beam of light. Neither Kanzaki nor Itsuwa had done that. Apparently another vehicle was following them.

Eventually, no more hornets and stag beetles could be seen.

Kamijou sighed and leaned against the rotary snowplow that rattled along on its continuous tracks.

“Well…it certainly is a good thing that Tsushima was there to help us, human,” said the 15cm god.

“Yeah, it really was. Life is so much easier when you have a capable young woman around. Thanks.”

“…Ohh?” “…Ohh?”

“(Wait, did I just step on some deadly landmine here. And to make matters worse, two of them at once?)”

A secret light shined sharply from Kanzaki Kaori and Itsuwa’s eyes and Tsushima wept in the driver’s seat.

===Part 12===

It was late at night. 1 AM had come and gone.

When you imagined a late night hospital, did you think of a horror story? Or something more risque? After many long years working here, the frog-faced doctor knew neither option was likely. When you worked there day in and day out, even a special location became no more than a routine. The fear faded and any weird expectations vanished.

Of course, he wouldn’t normally be working on this shift, but today was a special day. He hadn’t gotten any rest during the day either.

A young medical intern gave him a worried look.

“You need to get some sleep, doctor. You’re no good to us here if you pass out.”

“If I could get some free time…yes, there is something I should do, so can you cover things here?”

“Doctor!” the intern called after him, but this was his nature. He wanted to save every patient he could.

If Kamijou Touma was already dead, then there was nothing to be done.

But what if the boy was still alive?

Then he was the frog-faced doctor’s patient.

If a patient had received improper treatment, it was a doctor’s duty to save them.

(What a pain. Where do I even start with determining if a supposedly dead person is alive or dead? The guidelines for brain death would probably be best. Or mayb-)

He left the hospital.

And some strange thing attacked him only three steps out the door.

“Eh?”

If he had to describe it, he would have called it a golden crab standing more than three meters tall.

Even after seeing the pincer raised high, the frog-faced doctor only managed to get out a confused sound.

He did not properly understand the danger.

Yes.

He had no way of knowing since he knew nothing of magic, but his hospital was in District 7. That was the area where Coronzon had scattered so many of her scouts made of blonde hair.

And Coronzon had been so focused on escaping she hadn’t actually ordered them to stop.

Which meant they were still acting on orders to protect the ceremonial ground for Adikalika – the former site of the Windowless Building.

A pleasant slashing sound raced out.

The frog-faced doctor did not shed a single drop of blood.

It was sliced vertically.

The blonde hair scout’s bisected halves scattered to either side.

His eyes widened in confusion as a dark, lithe figure whispered to him.

“It is a pleasure to see you again, doctor.”

===Part 13===

In the District 20 skating rink, Misaka Mikoto had definitely seen that pointy-haired boy on the side of a large rotary snowplow.

And it had happened as the vehicle drove right past her.

She had been left behind.

“I want to shoot that idiot so bad.”

She flicked up arcade coins and launched a few Railguns at the monsters as she retreated from the skating rink proper into a narrow corridor.

The more she defeated, the more of them there were, which couldn’t have been much more annoying.

And the initial dragonflies and stag beetles were powerful enough already, so she would be killed if she didn’t fight back. There was no room for holding back.

(Are the others retreating somewhere too? There isn’t time to ask where we’ll meet up next, so I’ll just have to magnetically attach myself to one of the vehicles’ roofs.)

And all of a sudden, something occurred to Misaka Mikoto.

“…Wait.”

(If that idiot is alive, then why am I even wearing mourning clothes? Ahhh, how long am I going to keep wearing this cumbersome outfit? Now I feel like I’ve been making a fool of myself!!)

This was a sports facility, so would they have rental sportswear anywhere? Even a track suit or jumpsuit would be fine. She was willing to ignore how it looked if it was at least warm and didn’t restrict her movements!!

But this was a skating rink.

That meant any clothing would be for skating.

Such as a painfully bright lemon yellow figure skating uniform.

“U-um, would you call this a skating dress?”

It wouldn’t restrict her movements since it was designed for sports use. Combined with the bladeless shoes meant for the staff, she would have no trouble moving around. At the very least, she would have a much easier time of it than in this Japanese clothing. But why did it have to have a miniskirt? Or should she think of it more like a swimsuit’s pareo? Either way, it wasn’t something for walking around town in!

“B-but it’s so cold! What choice do I have!?”

She had decided herself she was willing to ignore how it looked.

It would certainly protect her from the biting chill of the January night.

It left less skin exposed than she had expected. Because it covered her with a skin-colored material.

But that was a problem of its own. The thin synthetic fiber was like wearing a full-body stocking. A terrifying thought for someone who tended to get zappy at the drop of a hat!

===Part 14===

Kamijou and the others arrived at a dark shape so large they truly had to look up to see it all.

This was the General Athletics Stadium.

Its size was apparent even from the outside.

Its diameter alone had to be hundreds of meters.

Instead of a dome covering it, it was apparently an outdoor stadium. Still, tall walls surrounded it on all sides. Those would be for the tiered seating, but they were just as tall as a four story building. So the same as a school building. This meant there was no seeing inside from out here.

Several other vehicles joined the rotary snowplow operated by Tsushima.

Index and Misaka Mikoto were among them.

“Thank good- woah! Misaka, what are you wearing!?”

“Don’t look at me!! Don’t look at my new and improved flavor with 20% extra at the same great price!!”

Her retort was as unusual as her outfit.

Was this the higher rarity version that showed more skin, or had she been unable to bear the cold and chose to rely on a figure skating outfit? He wished she would stop tugging down on the miniskirt-like part because that only drew his eye there all the more.

The Bologna Succubus and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet were both tilting their heads (in friendly synchronization?). …Yeah, they probably wouldn’t get what the big deal was when they had no trouble walking around in the frigid January night in their underwear or a naked apron.

But focusing on this wasn’t going to lead them to Coronzon.

Kamijou was curious about something.

“The tall walls keep us from seeing inside. I hope that also means Coronzon can’t see out.”

“Does it mean that? Wouldn’t a great demon be able to use clairvoyance or remote viewing?”

Tracking expert Takitsubo brought up a difficult topic.

“In modern Western magic, clairvoyance isn’t a means of seeing the contents of a closed envelope. It’s a ceremony used for spiritual meditation.”

Kanzaki provided an explanation, but it was hard to grasp without a solid foundation in the magic side.

She had spread out a large map, probably a privilege she had gained by taking control of the city. That she went to the trouble of printing out a paper copy seemed to show she still wasn’t used to the science side, though.

“It was fortunate we could get our hands on the official blueprints. Our numbers work in our favor. First, we should station personnel at each exit. There are more than 20 official gates for spectators and the real number is even greater due to the unofficial entrances for athletes and staff. With the exits blocked, we can begin exploring inside. Once we know where Coronzon is inside the large stadium and how she has modified it for her ceremony, we can launch our attack.”

“Coronzon should be defenseless while she works,” added Index. “Even if we can’t win a straight fight, we should be able to win right now.”

They could win?

Then why not charge in right this instant?

Kamijou couldn’t believe they would stay out when they knew she was in there.

Othinus must have sensed his impatience because she made a piercing comment from his shoulder.

“Wait, human. If Coronzon detects us and runs off, this will all have been a waste of time.”

“Either way, we should carefully investigate the situation inside and gather what information we can. We can always make our attack after all escape routes we are aware of have been covered.”

Kamijou was a little surprise to find Anna Sprengel advocating the cautious option.

Had that wicked woman learned how frightening it was to have everything fall apart at the last second?

“But can we really wait around that long? There’s that ley line thing, right? That direct route running underground that only the great demon can use. We can have her surrounded as much as we want – it won’t matter if she just teleports out of here!”

“Failure puts the entire human race at risk. Great Demon Coronzon will be able to do more than just this.”

Was that why she didn’t want anyone spying on her from the sky?

After giving a skeptical look at the Bologna Succubus (or her clothing more likely), Kanzaki nodded in agreement.

“We mustn’t forget that she will have escaped if she physically crosses the city wall.”

“But we don’t know the time limit!!”

“It won’t be in the next 5 or 10 minutes at least. That gives us time to take it slow, human.”

===Part 15===

“Hm.”

Great Demon Coronzon put a hand on her hip and observed her surroundings.

She stood at the very center of the enormous stadium.

“That completes the ceremonial ground. And the attribute extracted from the stadium as a whole gives me what I need. Direction, time, number…and the actual spiritual item in my hands: the tattva cards.”

She held a few colorful cards.

However, these cards were not historical antiques.

They were only symbols meant to help one enter the special mental state of meditation, so as long as the colors and symbols were correct, the material was immaterial. They were in fact made by coloring cardstock with thick permanent markers she had acquired after breaking the metal shutter covering a stadium shop. (There was probably a demand for materials that spectators could use to make placards or to draw their team’s logo on their face.)

Perhaps the stadium functioned like a giant magical circle with the cards acting as a control medium like a mouse or keyboard.

Coronzon had a physical body, but her true essence was a collection of Telesma energy. Unlike the pure angels, she was a mixture of different elements, which could be a pain, but by breaking them apart, she too could be handled as pure energy.

That meant she could inject herself into a weapon or armor or she could be carried around inside a thin talisman.

Or she could send herself through the ley lines to instantly travel to the other side of the planet.

“Now, time to begin,” she whispered.

===Part 16===

Kamijou was anxious.

Great Demon Coronzon was inside there, but the great size of the stadium worked against them. With more than 20 public gates, entering the wrong way would give Coronzon a chance to escape out a different one.

They needed to know her exact location before heading in.

…He understood the Anglicans’ point, but that didn’t mean he liked it. No matter how well they prepared themselves, Coronzon would disappear if they didn’t arrive in time. Then the world’s doom would begin on the other side of the planet. Coronzon would be able to choose any location she liked, so she could ensure the optimal conditions for herself. The next time would be far worse. Everything might truly be destroyed.

Next to him, Index spoke up. Addressing Kanzaki.

“Are you going to run a search from the outside? Isn’t that dangerous too?”

“It is. She could detect the magic power of a normal through-walls scan. However, we Amakusas have specialized in hiding our faith to avoid persecution, so we know a few tricks we can use.”

Kamijou and Mikoto had no clue what the Amakusas were working on with such determined looks on their faces. At this point, Index and her 103,001 memorized grimoires was the only person they could rely on.

She got it right on the first guess.

“The Maria Kannon?”

“This isn’t how they were originally used, but they were designed to look like an ordinary Buddhist figure while revealing its true face as the Virgin Mary to anyone who knew what to look for. By intentionally taking a broad interpretation of that concept, it can be remade into a camouflage-breaking searching spell to locate that which is hidden.”

===Part 17===

In the very center of the spacious stadium, Great Demon Coronzon sat quietly, regulated her breathing, and placed her index finger against one of the toxically colorful cards lined up on the ground.

Something felt off.

A sensation like a finger pressed between her eyes caused a tingling in the center of her head. Even though she was the one reaching out her finger. No, it was meaningless to think of it in that way.

The two were linked.

To touch it was to be touched.

The line between the self and the other – between the inner world and the outer world – was blurring.

The core of her body distorted. She was uncertain where she was even sitting.

“Kh.”

Her head wobbled. A vertiginous fluctuation interrupted her thoughts.

This was an Eastern mystical philosophy from ancient India.

She knew it wasn’t a good fit for her. A pure and proper angel never could have done it. But she was an impure and wicked being known as a great demon. And the Crowley system said every from of the mystical could be incorporated into your own spells if you reinterpreted it with your own logic. The wise would not give up just because they reached an impasse. They would use the discovery of that impasse to further elevate themselves.

She took deep breaths.

She consciously guided her thoughts toward stability.

She needn’t think of purifying herself.

There didn’t have to be just one answer.

The tattva cards did not work with pure elements in the first place.

Mathers had warned that meditation using those painfully colorful cards could cause intense anxiety or headaches for a mere human if used incorrectly. So how much worse would the damage from failure be for Coronzon as she tried to return herself to a state of pure energy?

She did not approach the true essence of this Eastern mystical philosophy.

The tattva cards were no more than tools used for control. That would have been how the Golden cabal used them too. They were valuable when it came to understanding the five elements, but there would be discrepancies between the cabal’s manual and the actual Eastern philosophy.

(The work has just passed 50%. That would explain why this inner fear and anxiety is taking on such concrete form.)

Coronzon did not move her eyes.

She had to focus her whole mind on ascending straight up.

Thus, any trivial distractions and detours could end up tearing her ego apart.

So she always stared straight ahead, using only the corner of her vision to watch how her own shadow wavered and thinned.

It was progressing well.

Once her shadow fully vanished, she would have also ''physically'' disappeared from Academy City.

The destruction of the world was within reach.

===Part 18===

“How is that search spell going!?” shouted Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

“I-it just passed 70%!” nervously reported Itsuwa.

70%.

That was more than halfway done, but Kamijou and the others didn’t know Coronzon’s status. If she was even a single percentage point ahead of them, they wouldn’t finish in time. It was possible the Anglicans would fully surround the stadium and rush in only to find Coronzon had already vanished.

Othinus sighed from Kamijou’s shoulder.

“There’s no need to wait until it’s 100% complete. We know Coronzon is in this building. So if we attack the small unsearched spots, we can confirm her location by sight.”

“How much of the stadium do you think those ‘small spots’ cover?” strongly retorted Kanzaki. “The search has covered 70% or maybe 80%. We’re risking our lives going in, so we want a little more assurance than that!!”

“What do you think, Touma?” asked Index.

“Hm? We should go in now! Right now!!”

He had no idea why an outsider like him had been asked for his opinion on a magical matter, but he gave his answer right away.

“Tsujiura,” said Index. “Kushiura and Qiu Xiang Bu also work. Those are Eastern, so the Amakusas should be able to use them too.”

“I see. So the idea that the first thing said by someone ignorant of the topic at hand can be used for divination,” said Kanzaki, sounding impressed.

In this case, Kamijou’s ignorance of magic gave his words meaning.

…He felt like this was declaring him useless in this fight, which seemed kind of insulting, but if the experts would listen to what he had to say, he didn’t care why.

Whatever the case, Kamijou’s words set them all into motion.

“Kanzaki will join one of the Amakusa teams, I guess. Okay, Alice!! You go lend Agnese’s group a hand!”

“Hm? The girl would prefer to stay with you, teacher.”

“Please! And Anna, you go with that team including Itsuwa and Tsushima!”

“Fool. I will step on you later.”

They complained, but they still split up.

Even Takitsubo and Kihara Noukan did as he said. They had to know even less about magic than him, but they were still risking their lives to stop this unknown threat.

After all, there were more than twenty public gates. The Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force would be blocking all of those exits, but they were dealing with ''the'' Coronzon here. Ordinary magicians weren’t enough. Each team needed an irregular member such as a Saint like Kanzaki Kaori, a Transcendent like the Bologna Succubus or Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, or even a special Transcendent like Anna Sprengel or Alice Anotherbible.

Kamijou didn’t see this as splitting up their forces.

Once they entered the stadium, they would converge on Coronzon’s location. He didn’t want anyone dying in the “blank time” until they broke down the right door and found Coronzon. He was sick of Coronzon being able to choose one of them at random for a one-hit kill lottery. Even if one team was unfortunate enough to run across Coronzon on their way in, they didn’t have to defeat her. Kamijou wanted to give each team someone who could let them survive until the other teams arrived.

Mikoto, who always felt left behind when it came to magical matters, suddenly panicked.

“W-wait, what about me!?”

“You’re with me, of course!! C’mon!!”

“Eh? O-oh…okay.”

Kamijou and Mikoto would enter through the closest gate: Gate 15. Neither knew much about magic, but he figured Othinus’s presence would make up for that. Index’s knowledge was the most important of all, so he couldn’t keep it to himself.

Gate 15 was shut with a metal grate shutter and a glass door, but Mikoto only had to inhale and exhale before it all opened for them. And not just Gate 15. All of the shutters and locks opened at once.

Without waiting for the shutter to fully rise, they ducked below it.

They entered a dark corridor.

And ran.

“Hey, human. Don’t get one-shotted here. Even if Coronzon is busy, she could have sent out those scouts.”

Othinus warned him from his shoulder, but Kamijou didn’t have time to respond. If they were even a second too late, it was all over.

His heart pounded in his ears. He felt like he was going to die on his own without Coronzon having to lift a finger. But he gritted his teeth and kept running.

He wouldn’t let her try again at destroying the world.

He would end this tonight.

===Part 19===

(75%.)

Great Demon Coronzon’s voice no longer vibrated the air.

From her perspective, it was less like her body was unraveling and more like the world around her was changing. Or maybe like she was crossing the boundary between phases. Her coordinates remained the same, but the scene around her changed as if flipping over a page.

Perhaps there was no real difference between the two.

The Golden cabal never managed to send their body across. Thus, their experts had tried to separate just their minds in an act known as astral projection to virtually achieve a leap between phases. They had worked hard to peek into another world like heaven or hell. …And as a result, quite a few magicians had failed to cling to their sanity.

Coronzon’s nearly transparent fingertip passed right through the tattva card.

She was more than halfway on the other side now.

The great demon grinned.

(No more physical control is needed at this point. Now I only have to wait for the process to complete!!)

===Part 20===

Kamijou and Mikoto ran down a long, long corridor.

They couldn’t afford to hide their footsteps now.

Coronzon was so close.

“We’re going to come out into the stands, right? How far is it to the actual sports field!?”

“The actual distance isn’t that far, but the stands aren’t flat. Don’t trip and fall in the darkness, okay?”

Mikoto gave him a surprisingly sincere answer.

There hadn’t been any bright beams of light or explosions yet.

What were Kanzaki, Agnese, and the others doing?

They would have entered through all the entrances at once, but apparently none of the teams had run into Coronzon. They didn’t know where she was hiding to complete her ceremony, but she hadn’t noticed their presence yet. That made this their best chance.

If they failed, it was all over.

(We might not win in a straight fight, but what if she’s immobilized by the important ceremony? This time will be different. This is our only chance to settle things with her!!)

The end of the corridor came into view.

Like a rectangular hole cut out of the darkness.

Kamijou gritted his teeth, clenched his fist, and ran with all his might.

He emerged into a silent space. The flow of time ground to a halt.

No one was there.

The place was deserted.

“What’s…going on?” muttered Kamijou, stopped partway down the stands.

He could hear more people emerging from different directions. But that was all. Even from here, he could see Agnese, the Bologna Succubus, and others looking around in confusion on the other side of the stadium. The great demon wasn’t shining bright as she completed some kind of ceremony and Coronzon didn’t began a fierce battle in an attempt to escape.

Great Demon Coronzon wasn’t here.

It didn’t feel like she had fled in a panic either. There was no warmth in the vast space. It had likely been empty this entire time. Coronzon had never been here. They had chosen the wrong location.

Had their calculations been off?

No, they hadn’t been relying on Index alone. It had been a group effort with help from Anna Sprengel, Kanzaki Kaori, and more from the magic side. And they had been certain Coronzon would use this stadium if she was using Zeus symbolism. So how could they have been wrong!?

“Touma.”

A girl from another group joined him.

Index’s usual childlike air was broken by the trembling voice she forced out.

She seemed hesitant to speak.

“Is this district used for any other special purpose? Other than sports!”

“Huh? Yes. It is a district of stadiums and domes meant to hold tens of thousands of people. I think Aogami Pierce mentioned it being the holy land for idol concerts.”

A quiet thud reached his ears.

Index was unable to support her wobbling body and fell back into one of the seats. The cat mewed in complaint from her arms.

“Then Coronzon wasn’t using sports as the symbol for a sanctuary or temple.”

Her lips quivered.

“Songstresses, plays…she was using the performing arts. Which means it isn’t Zeus! And if she is using a different symbol and a different god, she would be in an entirely different location!!”

===Part 21===

Maximum occupancy: 255 thousand.

Coronzon snorted with laughter when she recalled that extreme number.

…A soccer stadium or baseball stadium could never reach that number even with every seat filled. That display was meant for a concert or live performance where even the field itself was filled with seats.

Coronzon was somewhere like that.

(This district is filled with stadiums and domes. To put it another way, most of them are not the designated home field of a pro team whose games you can watch on a sports app. And “just a stadium” isn’t going to be used just for sports. …District 20’s stadiums probably make most of their income this way. I saw through that right away. And a facility primarily used for concerts is not a Zeus-associated track stadium. To be blunt, this is a large facility built for shows, not for sports.)

She didn’t want Apollo, god of music.

She wanted Dionysus, god of theater.

In ancient Greece, sporting events had been held in sanctuaries as a ceremonial offering to a god, but plays and songs had been made as offering in those same sanctuaries. Thus, holding a concert or live performance in a stadium that could contain a large audience was not a new idea.

Greek theater was the origin of modern stage plays. And the original form of that had been a festival held as an offering to Dionysus, god of alcohol and insanity.

That meant his symbols could be extracted from a large stadium like this.

(The work is past 90%. And yet no pursuit has arrived yet. What’s the matter, humanity? If you let me escape this easily, you will be extinct by tomorrow!!)

===Part 22===

So not sports but music. No, theater.

Not a stadium for sporting events but for concerts and live performances.

When they corrected the initial assumption and had Index recalculate, they were given a single candidate.

“The Brilliant Outdoor Performance Stadium. It points north and, if the adjacent park is viewed as a mountain forest, you could extract the symbols of Dionysus. This time I’m sure of it! A god of insanity would be perfect for controlling her power as a chaotic great demon!”

Now that they had a new answer, they couldn’t just sit around.

Their initial wrong answer would have given Coronzon that much more time for the ceremony to break her body down into energy. As soon as she finished that, she would dive into a ley line and escape to the other side of the planet. There wasn’t a moment to lose.

Kamijou and the others hitched a ride on the rotary snowplow driven by Tsushima of the Amakusas to reach the new destination.

It was in the same district.

Driving there, it wouldn’t take long. The giant stadium capable of holding 255 thousand came into view.

“Is that it? Please still be in the city, Coronzon. Dammit.”

As soon as Kamijou jumped down from the snowplow onto the red snow, he staggered to the side.

He regathered his strength, somehow managing to keep himself steady, but he bumped into something next to him.

But not because he had nearly fallen.

“Ugh…”

He heard a small groan.

From Takitsubo Rikou.

She must have arrived on a different vehicle. Kamijou instinctually caught the unsteady track suit girl…and found her body temperature was higher than he had expected.

Not just warm, but blazing hot.

He was shocked.

“That’s not good… How long have you been hiding this, Takitsubo!?”

“…”

She refused to say a word.

She had been knocked out by some kind of attack from Coronzon during the Adikalika stuff. It was a miracle she was even still alive, yet she had joined the chase instead of calling an ambulance. Anyone would be in a similar state after that.

“You can’t go on. You need to get some rest! You’ve seen the way things are, right!? The Anglicans don’t want to torment Hamazura!!”

“You should listen to your own advice, Touma. Stopping Adikalika was more than enough of a win. You’re hurt, so stay here and look after her,” said an exasperated Index.

Even though it was she who had actually stopped the attack after arriving late. She had a perfect memory, so this wasn’t just a mistake. So was she giving them the credit? When he thought about it, he realized Kanzaki, Agnese, and the others hadn’t actually seen the moment Adikalika was stopped…

Speaking of Kanzaki, she called everyone over.

“If the countdown is close to the end, we can’t spend time on an initial search like before. That will mean a greater risk when we enter. Needless to say…”

“Then do we have time to sit around listening to the headmaster’s speech? I’ll steal a map of the stadium with my powers, so let’s get going!”

Mikoto, Index, Kanzaki, and the rest got moving.

In no time, there wasn’t anyone left.

It was so quiet.

Kamijou sat down and focused on taking deep breaths. He wasn’t as bad as Takitsubo, but he had lost his balance earlier. He had taken a direct hit from Coronzon. He wasn’t a doctor and couldn’t even imagine how much damage had been done inside his body, but he knew better than to be optimistic.

Takitsubo Rikou’s lips moved where she lay right next to him.

He doubted she was conscious, so maybe she was having a nightmare.

“…Hamazura…”

“Kh.”

Kamijou grimaced. In agony.

She had to be badly worried about her friend. If she didn’t do something to help out and earn points with the Anglicans, she would lose all chance of negotiating with them. But she was too injured to move.

If Coronzon did escape, who could say where they would direct their anger. Even if Kanzaki, Agnese, and the others fighting here didn’t, the higher ups watching from across the ocean might demand a live sacrifice from those who were close to Coronzon.

Could that be why Index had used such vague phrasing to give up credit for stopping Adikalika?

But it wasn’t enough. Takitsubo wanted something more to push her claim of having contributed, so Adikalika wasn’t enough and she had come with them even if it meant hiding how bad her injuries were.

And unlike her, Kamijou could still move.

He couldn’t push himself too hard.

But he had to make up his mind.

“Okay. I’ll go.”

“Human? …It figures.”

“I’ll stop Coronzon, so don’t you worry, Takitsubo. Don’t forget: winning is meaningless if you die. Your goal is to be with Hamazura, right? Then you need to rest.”

He forced his heavy body up and began to walk.

No, he was trying to run full speed, but this was the most speed he could manage.

Even so, Imagine Breaker would have to be of some use.

Coronzon’s magic was extraordinarily powerful.

Maybe he couldn’t fight her himself, but he could at least help out someone who could. If he could shield them from even a single attack, it might be enough to decide the battle.

He would overturn the game as a wild card.

===Part 23===

Great Demon Coronzon only had to wait. And the time finally arrived.

It was already over.

99%.

Even if someone barged in now, she could break her body down into Telesma and escape Academy City through the ley line before they could do anything.

Her victory was assured. Those humans were too late to prevent their doom. The silly fools should have resisted more.

But then…

“You think so? Then allow me to cause a bit of trouble.”

Her vision shattered.

Black, red, silver, blue, yellow… It all collapsed into a wild dance of colors.

No.

Crossing between phases and breaking herself down may have been the same thing. She had thought so herself.

Which meant it was she who was collapsing.

She could no longer support her sitting position and fell to the side. Something was wrong with her limbs. She couldn’t remember how to breathe. Nevertheless, she managed to gather all her strength and scream.

“A…lei…sterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!?”

“Now, now, Coronzon. You should know better than to mess with anything as dangerous as the tattva cards which even the Golden cabal had to issue a recall for. Don’t you remember what Mathers said? They can cause intense anxiety or headaches if used incorrectly. Why would you visit the mental world after going to the trouble of physically sealing me away? Are you trying to kill yourself? ''In here'', I can still wield some power.”

(Emergency…shutoff!!)

A dull “snap!” came from the center of her head.

“Khah!!”

She tried to let out the breath caught in her throat, but what came out was colored red.

For a while, she lay on her side convulsing until she forcibly suppressed the writhing of every last one of her internal organs. Yes, it was urgent that she accurately recalled the shape of her body. She had already begun to enter the ley line when the magic failed. She had to return to her original body in a hurry, but if she forgot that body’s shape now, she could be entirely annihilated.

It took her a full ten seconds.

Once she calmed her wild breathing and recalled the cycle for inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide, she had reclaimed her physical body.

The tattva cards could cause mental confusion if used incorrectly.

For her, did that meant releasing the sealed Aleister? In other words…

“Dammit!!!”

This meant a change of plans.

She couldn’t use this method anymore.

And if she was going to cross Academy City’s wall for a physical escape…she had no reason to remain in this stadium. She had to leave as soon as possible.

===Part 24===

Kamijou forced his unsteady body to keep moving and pushed open a small metal door with his shoulder.

He slipped through the half-open door, probably a staff entrance, and entered the stadium.

He found a dark, cold, heavy space.

Big too.

…He had apparently entered something like a parking garage. Was it a space for workers located below the stadium? He didn’t know enough to have a good mental picture of how stadiums were structured.

He did have his phone with him, but he didn’t know what was happening inside. The pursuers had to be careful too, so he wanted to avoid causing someone’s phone to ring while they were trying to hide.

“Index? Misaka?” he called quietly.

He didn’t know how the Amakusas and the Former Agnese Force were searching the stadium. Because they weren’t sharing information with him.

He heard some light footsteps through the darkness. They echoed off the gray walls and were moving away from him.

He immediately ran full speed in that direction.

He could tell just from listening whose they were.

“(Human, you noticed how odd that was, I trust?)”

(We all know how powerful Coronzon is, so everyone will be searching as part of a team. So no one should be leaving on their own like that!)

“Coronzon!! Is that you!?”

“You really shouldn’t have announced your presence. Unless you have the supernatural power to kill with words alone.”

The footsteps stopped.

A voice spoke from behind one of the thick concrete pillars lining the space.

A hateful voice.

“I’m relieved. Because you I can easily kill and complete my escape. Now, Kamijou Touma, how do you intend to stop me? Don’t try to tell me that foolish shout was all part of a plan and you have a more troublesome opponent hiding nearby.”

15cm Othinus could not directly fight, so he was effectively alone.

Coronzon had seen right through him.

What about the phone in his pocket? No. He might not have a signal, but more than that, using the touchscreen in the dark parking garage would give him away with the backlight. Coronzon would act before he could call for help.

“You chose this stadium because it was your best bet, right? You can’t use magic to escape through the ley lines now. So give up, Coronzon.”

“Why should I? Great demons are perfectly capable of driving cars. And it goes without saying that ordinary cars can slip right past a scan for magic power.”

Kamijou’s eyes widened.

That was her plan immediately after trying to escape using Telesma and a ley line? She switched gears way too fast.

“How many trump cards do you have!?”

“More than a mere human could ever imagine, that’s for sure.”

If she escaped in a car, he couldn’t keep up on foot. His phone was an iffy option too. So was there nothing he could do? If he shouted at the top of his lungs, the others would surely gather here. He wouldn’t let her escape.

The voice alone continued from behind the pillar.

“How about this, Kamijou Touma? What if you keep quiet and let me go?”

“Why even ask that? It’s meaningless. If you escape tonight, you’ll work to destroy all of humanity by tomorrow, right? Then nothing you could offer me would be worth it!!”

“Oh, you will let me go. Because I happened to pick up a trump card on my way here.”

Someone emerged from behind the concrete pillar. Slowly.

Blonde hair.

A woman.

But that hair was fluffy and only fell to the shoulder blades.

This wasn’t Great Demon Coronzon.

He had only heard a single set of footsteps, so had she been captured behind the pillar?

What was being held against her from outside Kamijou’s view? The feminine lines of her body were trembling and her expression was like a cross between tears and a smile.

He recognized her as one of the Amakusas.

“Tsushima.”

It wasn’t even a case of “move and she’s dead”.

All of a sudden, the red splattered out.

From the side of her neck. Kamijou was an ordinary high school boy without much forensic medical knowledge, but the location the blood was spraying from sent a chill down his spine. She seemed to have been cut by an invisible blade.

A laughing woman stuck her head out from behind the pillar.

Great Demon Coronzon really was a demon.

“Kee hee ha ha!! Protecting human lives is no easy task, is it? Or are you willing to take another tour of hell for her!?”

Coronzon kicked Tsushima’s doll-like body from behind, shoving her toward him.

He had no choice but to catch her. Only a few seconds had passed, but she felt limp and heavy in his arms. She clung heavily to him like a down blanket soaked with water. He pressed his palm firmly against the wound in her neck. How much blood loss was lethal for a human? If he didn’t stop the blood spurting from the side of her neck, she really would die.

At that moment, Kamijou’s vision suddenly went dark.

But not because Coronzon had done anything. It took him a while to even realize that. He had long since pushed his body past the limit.

He shouldn’t have been up and about at all.

“Human!!”

“Kah…ah…?”

He felt horribly faint.

He collapsed and couldn’t get back up. It wasn’t just that he couldn’t move his arms and legs very much. He wasn’t even sure which way was up.

“Kh.”

He held Tsushima tight in his arms. He gritted his teeth and tried to take in as much information on the physical reality around him. Sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch… it didn’t matter what. He was afraid he would pass out otherwise.

“Ha ha ha!! You said it was meaningless, didn’t you? You couldn’t have been more right! Why bother saving a life or two now when I will be destroying the entire world soon!”

No, it wasn’t working.

Even after all this…he couldn’t stop his mind from slipping away into darkness.

He had to avoid removing his hand from that neck wound.

He heard the sound of metal breaking.

Then the sound of an engine starting and the sound of Coronzon driving a car away.

“Wait…Coronzon…”

The darkness took over.

Kamijou Touma’s consciousness fully faded.

“Waiiiiit!!!”

===Part 25===

“Can you hear me?”

Near the center of the open stadium, Agnese heard a young male voice.

Hearing a voice when no one was there was nothing unusual. She was commanding more than 250 people, so she was using communication magic.

But this was odd.

The Former Agnese Force was all female.

“This…Mich………k… I have an urgent message. Can anyone hear me?”

She was using a Roman Catholic communication spiritual item derived from the Barbara Branch. It was made from a cherry tree twig with a few buds attached and it wasn’t all that unusual. …Even if it did seem wrong for nuns to be carrying around tools for love fortunetelling.

The hard buds unnaturally opened below the frigid sky and the flower petals vibrated.

They produced a human voice.

(You’re kidding. Is someone hijacking the channel!?)

“Is anyone at all in Academy City receiving this!? There is something I must tell you immediately!”

“?”

Itsuwa gave Agnese a puzzled look from nearby. …Apparently she couldn’t hear this. That meant it was targeted only at the Roman Catholics of the Former Agnese Force.

Agnese Sanctis frowned.

“This is Agnese Sanctis. Who are you?”

“Thank god… I got through! This is Michael Speak, a cardinal officially appointed by the pope!!”

She was at a loss for words.

…Those were the around a hundred ultra elites chosen out of the two billion Roman Catholics to directly advise the pope. Ordinarily, she would never even directly speak to one.

But his voice didn’t fit the part. He sounded like a stressed young man. He didn’t sound even thirty.

Perhaps his modesty was what had earned him so much popularity.

(Another Michael. And with the fate of the world hanging in the balance.)

“What does a great cardinal want with lowly peon like me?”

“Tell only the Roman Catholics to get out of there immediately. You need to leave Academy City as soon as possible. Your team will obey you if you tell them!”

“?”

She had expected a protest or sarcasm in response, so this came as a complete surprise.

This was advance warning of an attack.

She didn’t know what the Vatican was preparing to do, but she had to assume it was a fairly dangerous large-scale spell. Something even greater than Coronzon’s Adikalika.

“You mean it’s close to being activated?”

“As Roman Catholics, we cannot allow someone as dangerous as Great Demon Coronzon to escape Academy City. If she cannot be defeated on the front line, then the Vatican must reach out a helping hand.”

Reach out a helping hand.

So from their perspective, they were saving lives.

And the same went for Agnese, Lucia, Angelene, and the rest of the Former Agnese Force fighting on the front line.

“There are three activation conditions. First, if you completely lose track of Coronzon and the trail goes cold. Two, at 5:47 AM local time. In other words, at dawn. Third, if we believe a non-Catholic force has learned of our plan and could attempt to stop it. If any one of those conditions is met, the Vatican will activate Saint Georgios’s Fire.”

“Kh.”

The most important condition was the third.

That meant the Vatican didn’t want them sharing this information with anyone else. Even though this would mean the destruction of Academy City. The chance to evacuate was for the Former Agnese Force only.

…Were they being pressured to abandon Academy City and the Anglicans who they had fought and risked their lives alongside?

“We are always watching and listening, Sister Agnese. The physical distance matters little. So do not attempt to contact anyone else through trickery or deception. We will not overlook it.”

(Magical surveillance is a hell of a thing. Although I’m sure it was originally justified as a way for the pure servants of god to punish wicked magicians.)

She didn’t actually know how much she was being observed. The Catholics had been outdone by the other forces so far, so Agnese thought they had to be bluffing to an extent. But this still made it hard to take any bold action.

And she knew what Saint Georgios’s Fire was.

She had heard rumors of it back when she still lived in Italy.

There was a legend about the death of Saint Georgios, or Saint George as he was known in England. When he was being pressured to renounce his faith in a wicked temple, a great ball of fire fell from heaven and blew it all away. So it was a legend of pure attack power.

“That’s a large-scale spell that targets a distant location through the ley lines, isn’t it?”

“Ironically, it uses the same pathway Coronzon is attempting to use to escape. But since we can only use it and not control it, we cannot stop her from using it.”

The Roman Catholic spell was essentially a cluster bomb that detonated two billion explosive flames across the entirety of the targeted city.

And rather than burn everything down with the explosive blasts and flames, it used an extreme high temperature to rapidly alter the atmospheric pressure and oxygen level across the entire area. That meant fortifying oneself behind a shield or wall was meaningless. Because your own body would rupture from within. Afterwards, only a lifeless city would remain.

It was effectively the ideal form of a human killer.

(Now isn’t the time for us humans to be fighting among ourselves!!)

“I thought the pope had learned an important lesson from the trials of World War Three. I can’t believe he would agree to such a forceful solution.”

“His authorization is unnecessary. The cardinals have the right to hold an ecumenical council or election. …And the majority wish to do this. We in the minority have no way to stop them.”

“Doesn’t that seem disrespectful?”

“Abstaining in protest will not change the outcome of the vote. Did I ever say that I like that this is happening!?”

There was real strength behind those last words.

That had to be what he really thought. Which was why it pierced Agnese so deeply.

But even if he was sensible, he couldn’t change what was happening. She could tell that too.

(Well, this is a disaster…)

And there was an issue beyond the number of victims across Academy City.

A more fundamental issue.

“Don’t you know ''a human killer spell won’t affect an inhuman demon''? Sowing further confusion in Academy City will only create more openings in the city perimeter!! You’re playing right into Coronzon’s hand!!”

Apparently Coronzon’s special trait remained in effect.

She tore people apart and obstructed their evolution.

(But I can’t believe it’s gone so far.)

“Sister Agnese!!”

“What do you want, cardinal!? I’m really goddamn busy right now!”

“This is a compromise. As much of one as I could get. The original plan was to immediately activate Saint Georgios’s Fire and I only barely stopped that from happening!”

There was kindness in his words.

But that kindness was unnecessary. Something was fundamentally off about this.

“Don’t tell me this is about wounded pride. Index stopped Adikalika by redirecting it to an unnamed desert island in the Atlantic. The Italian peninsula wasn’t harmed!”

“But Coronzon did launch her large-scale attack spell. And that wasn’t her only trump card. Her power is unfathomable, so she must be destroyed when we have the chance. None of the cardinals can ignore that point. I’m sorry, but that includes me!”

She wasn’t sure what to say.

She understood. Yes, even Agnese was furious. If she hadn’t made a conscious effort to calm herself, she might have left the Anglicans back then.

“Violence is wrong,” he continued. “I understand that. We erred and let God’s Right Seat manipulate us during World War Three. …But this time, ''we are in our rights to retaliate.'' Overturning that idea will not be easy, Sister Agnese.”

(Coronzon. Your mere presence really does make a mess of humanity as a whole!)

The Roman Catholics naturally had a variety of emotions about this.

About Coronzon and about Academy City for failing to stop this crisis earlier.

…Nuclear missiles could destroy the world, so it would take a lot of guts to launch the first one yourself. But what if an enemy launched one at you first? That would lower the mental hurdle for pressing the launch button considerably.

People were easily influenced by the word “retaliation”. And that could burn down the entire world.

“I will do everything I can, but I doubt I can stop this from happening. Sooner or later, Saint Georgios’s Fire will be launched.”

He was one of the sensible ones.

He would truly prefer not to use it.

But that was why nothing he said was a mere threat or bluff.

For the pacifists, nothing was more painful than having to declare that an atrocity would soon be happening.

“So you need to escape that city immediately. It’s a shame what will happen to Academy City and the Anglicans, but it’s too late for them. Gather up all the Roman Catholics and get out of there!!”

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume14 Chapter1

2025-12-14T03:08:38Z

Churronzon: 40 -> 400

==Chapter 1: Fleeing Time Bomb – DEVIL_in_Science_World.==

===Part 1===

Midnight.

The world was meant to be tumbling toward destruction at this time, but Academy City remained intact. But that wouldn’t last if Great Demon Coronzon was allowed to get away. Then the overtime they had earned would only delay that doom until tomorrow.

The red snow had absorbed the explosive soot, dust, and other impurities produced by a warlike situation, but it had ceased.

“Sitra Achra… I knew the theory, but I never imagined I would see it for myself,” said Index in a daze.

Othinus emerged from the white hood and moved to Kamijou’s shoulder.

Wasn’t that the thing Coronzon had used to blow away the thick clouds overhead?

The only one here who seemed sleepy was the calico cat in the girl’s arms.

“That doesn’t help us,” whispered mourning clothes Mikoto, her voice low. “A clear night sky will only allow the temperature to drop thanks to radiative cooling. The red snow has stopped, but there’s enough on the ground to keep traffic a mess. All it did is make this city even more deadly.”

Snow plowing, distributing food, distributing warm clothing – there was a lot that had to be done. But Coronzon was the greatest threat and, until she had been dealt with, everyone had to focus on her. They couldn’t afford to dedicate sufficient manpower to those other tasks.

They had to end this before someone died.

…And Kamijou was also worried about Human Aleister, who remained inside the great demon.

“Teacher!”

“Fool, explain the situation.”

A few more people approached at a run.

Alice Anotherbible, Anna Sprengel, and some more.

Coronzon had mentioned some spatial trickery preventing them from approaching this place…but that must have stopped functioning after she chose to run.

Kamijou intended to give a succinct explanation, but Index and Mikoto joined the conversation too. Even Othinus tugged on his ear from his shoulder. A lot more people than he thought had questions.

He looked up to see the friendly(?) flying pair of the Bologna Succubus and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet. The term “air support” sounded so reassuring at the moment.

He saw another winged girl too.

That one was the artificial demon Qliphah Puzzle 545.

“Wh-what about my master? Has the Board Chairman come to yet?”

“Dammit, I don’t think we can expect any support from him. We’ll just have to do this ourselves.”

“~ ~ ~!!!”

With some noisy flapping, Qliphah Puzzle 545 rapidly took flight.

“Where is she going?” asked Alice Anotherbible, tilting her head up toward the night sky.

She may have been on her way to Accelerator’s secret base. Kamijou didn’t bother stopping her. He didn’t know what she intended to do, but if Accelerator was unconscious, he would need someone’s support.

A loud voice reached him from elsewhere.

It belonged to Kanzaki Kaori.

The Anglicans had to have tens of thousands of people in Academy City.

“We must set up a surveillance network centered on District 7. With her wings damaged, Coronzon will be limited to travel on foot. If you do spot her, do not attempt to face her on your own. Make sure to share the information you receive with your own eyes and ears. Losing that information will only give her a chance to escape!”

She was one of the world’s fewer than twenty Saints.

Kamijou had heard she could run at supersonic speed if she wanted to, but she was matching the others’ speed now.

“I can’t push my body too hard.” Looking composed, Kanzaki answered Kamijou’s gaze. “I will of course remove that limitation once Coronzon has been sighted, but I want to avoid breaking the sound barrier without a solid lead. Because I don’t want to be too worn out to fight by the time I do reach her.”

He doubted that was her only reason.

In the end, Kanzaki was afraid. They were up against Great Demon Coronzon. What if she moved out ahead, leaving her allies behind, and Coronzon snuck in from behind? Then the allies she had left behind in supposed safety would be killed one after another. She most feared a situation like that where only she and her Saintly luck managed to survive.

The red snow crunched below several feet.

More and more magic side pursuers were arriving: Tatemiya Saiji and Itsuwa of the Amakusas, Agnese and Lucia of the former Catholics, and the standard Anglicans.

They needed as much help as they could get.

Academy City covered around a third of Tokyo and contained a population of 2.3 million. They had to find and apprehend a single individual fleeing through that city. Kamijou had no idea if they could actually do it, but the world would be destroyed if they failed tonight.

His entire body ached.

He even felt like something was wrong with the connections between his bones.

But he clenched his teeth and spoke as if directing a challenge toward Kanzaki, who had taken charge.

“I’m going too. I’m the one who fought Coronzon and let her escape. I’m responsible for this, so use me for whatever’s necessary.”

“But…”

“Aleister answered my call. He must still be fighting against Coronzon, so I can’t just go lie in a hospital bed!”

Kanzaki Kaori sighed softly.

She looked away from him and toward Index and Mikoto.

“Always have at least two people with you who you can rely on. I am not permitting you to act on your own.”

“I know I’m asking a lot! Thank-”

“Don’t push your luck. I honestly think it would be a lot simpler to knock you out with a punch to the gut, but that would be too cruel given your injuries. I don’t want to overdo it and kill you.”

…How was he supposed to react to something like that?

Kanzaki Kaori continued in complete seriousness.

“You are in a terrible state. If you refuse to let others support you, I really will knock you out. So choose whichever option you consider safer.”

She likely only made such a swift decision because of how pressing the situation was.

“Fool,” said Anne Sprengel. “Coronzon is on her way to escape Academy City even now.”

“Yes,” agreed Index. “We need to stop her before she crosses the wall and is released into the wider world.”

Kamijou nodded at them both.

Kanzaki reacted with exasperation.

“You really don’t change, do you? I don’t know if I should call you reckless or what.”

“Sorry, but I’m not going to die so easily. I swore I wouldn’t waste this life granted to me in hell.”

For some reason, the earnestness of this response made Kanzaki recoil.

But what about an ordinary high school boy could frighten a great Saint like her?

“Heyyy!” called down a voice overhead.

The Bologna Succubus had descended to circle slowly in the night sky above. With Blodeuwedd the Bouquet dangling from her. The low angle was terribly risque when the girl was only wearing a naked apron below the thick metal coat.

“Still no hints for tracking down Coronzon? Then we’ll fly back up and continue our search.”

“W-wait. I thought magicians weren’t suppose to fly! Wasn’t there some weird rule about flying being easy but bringing you down also being easy!?”

“We can survive even if we are brought down, so no worries. In fact, being brought down would tell us Coronzon is nearby, so it would actually be good news.”

With that said, the Bologna Succubus swung Blodeuwedd the Bouquet around in one hand and ascended back into the night sky.

Yet a lively voice still came from Kanzaki’s hand. …So was Kanzaki holding some kind of communication spiritual item?

“As a lover of the unloved, I’ve honestly taken an interest in Coronzon too.”

Kamijou’s jaw dropped.

(Wait, wait, don’t tell me some weird flag has been triggered in Blodeuwedd the Bouquet!)

But he was afraid a careless question about it would push her in the wrong direction.

The Bologna Succubus’s gloomy voice responded. Sounding like she was used to this.

“Side with her and I finally have the justification I need. I will murder you, satisfying years of resentment, you lewd goddess.”

“(This isn’t good, human. For the Transcendents, their salvation conditions are even more important than their own lives.)”

Othinus was right.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s comments were certainly concerning, but…

“Too bad. What I’m looking for is someone who’s starved for love. When people are providing a plentiful supply at their own expense and she brushes it off as an unasked-for nuisance, it just pisses me off.”

“So maybe there’s nothing to worry about for now?”

Index did not sound very confident. It didn’t inspire much confidence either.

The Transcendents really were a challenge.

Also, why even bring the naked apron girl along? But Blodeuwedd the Bouquet didn’t seem particular bothered by it.

“Those two must be really good frien- dwah?!”

Kamijou didn’t even finish his comment before something fell from the sky.

If he hadn’t noticed it and dodged out of the way, a glass terrarium heavier than a flower pot would have struck him right in the head. Othinus, who had nearly become collateral damage on his shoulder, looked up into the sky and said something.

“That’s the same deadly prank pulled by rude city crows up on building rooftops.”

The sound of something beating at the air interrupted them.

Was the dazzling light a searchlight or something?

“This is Yomikawa of Anti-Skill! We can only perform a primitive search in the helicopter, but we can’t expect any help from drones or satellites right now!! Where should we start looking!?”

“Fool. It looks like the search can continue even if those silly magicians are brought down by an interception spell.”

And…

“Wait,” said a voice. A flat female voice. “I’m going too.”

It was the track suit girl. Wasn’t her name Takitsubo Rikou?

Her tone was flat, but the sound of her breathing showed something was wrong.

“You are injured.”

Golden retriever Kihara Noukan kept it at that. …Was that dog capable of being considerate enough to refrain from digging deeper?

It was hard to tell because Takitsubo rarely showed any expression, but she appeared to be in a fair bit of pain. Most likely, the condition below her clothing would be shocking to see.

She had contacted Great Demon Coronzon before Kamijou arrived.

Since she had collapsed, she had most likely been attacked in some way.

Kamijou’s eyes widened.

“Are you kidding me? You look closer to death than me. To be clear, the Anglicans alone have tens of thousands of people out working, so it’s no problem if an injured person or two sits this one out. We can’t bring you along in that condition!!”

“Hamazura.”

The track suit girl’s eyes were on another boy who lay unmoving in the red snow.

Hamazura Shiage.

…Kamijou couldn’t remember clearly since he had been near death, but he was pretty sure that guy had sided with Coronzon shortly before the Adikalika large-scale attack spell was activated.

He had betrayed them.

And now Adikalika had failed and Coronzon had fled on her own.

Left behind, Hamazura’s position was looking worse all the time.

“Hamazura will be in trouble. I don’t know what system of rules will punish him, but I need to create some kind of bargaining chip before that punishment can happen. So I will do whatever it takes to protect him.”

Kamijou looked to Index. This had to do with magic, so would jurisdiction fall to the Anglicans?

Kamijou couldn’t say if the “bargaining chip” Takitsubo had in mind would mean anything to them.

But that had to be the only thing left for her to rely on.

“What can you do ''now''?” pressed Mikoto in her black mourning clothes.

That wasn’t disgust in her voice. Was it a hint of fear?

“(I know she’s on our side now, but a first impression like that one is hard to shake.)”

“My AIM Stalker is useless on someone without an AIM Diffusion Field. So I can’t directly search for Coronzon.”

But Takitsubo Rikou didn’t hesitate to respond.

While looking Mikoto square in the face.

“But I also have a history gathering and analyzing information for Item. I am used to tracking down and hunting people in this city.”

“Yes, we could use a tracker from the science side. Especially with that new Board Chairman out of the picture,” said Othinus from Kamijou’s shoulder.

Whether she actually meant it or was only trying to put injured Takitsubo’s mind at ease, Kamijou couldn’t tell.

Kamijou waved both hands to call over Kanzaki who was giving instructions to Tatemiya and Agnese a short distance away. Next to him, Alice hopped up and down and waved her hands along with him.

Kanzaki sighed when she heard what he had to say.

“Then have her start at the beginning.”

She kept the instruction short.

Of course, they weren’t relying only on Takitsubo. The magicians would be performing their own magical search. But they were searching for Great Demon Coronzon, who lurked in the abyss to guard magical knowledge, so those attempts would likely be blocked at every turn.

“Coronzon has fled. However, I doubt she has continued running in a single direction. Takitsubo, was it? How can you track her?”

“That demon(?) fortunately lost the use of her wings, so she can’t cheat by flying. And if she is escaping on the surface, she will leave tracks. Especially on a snowy day like this.”

“She will notice any obvious tracks. Won’t she cover them up?”

Good point.

“So it comes down to the balance between the tracks that cannot be prevented and the tracks that will definitely be erased,” said the golden retriever in a highly refined voice.

Takitsubo Rikou plainly continued.

“It is true footprints in the snow can be easily erased. She might not have ordinary fingerprints to leave behind. And given the state of the city, we can’t hope to search for footage of her from security cameras or security robots.”

“Ugh,” groaned Kamijou. “Then how are we supposed to track down Coronzon!?”

“How about this?”

===Part 2===

Academy City District 3 was the northernmost district.

The dead office area had no lights in the windows or even in the traffic signals.

She had managed to shake those loathsome Magic Gods, Nephthys and Niang-Niang.

If she could cross the wall here, she could leave the city to the north…and into the Saitama area.

Great Demon Coronzon hoped to ''quietly'' slip past the wall. Ideally, her pursuers wouldn’t realize she had escaped.

Her useless wings were folded up for now.

She did not let unnecessary regrets hold her back. The Adikalika large-scale attack spell had been stopped. She accepted that result. Which was why she had decided to crush them with all her might.

For her, a few troublesome people were mixed in with her pursuers.

For example, Index, the grimoire library who had memorized 103,001 grimoires. Or Anna Sprengel, the Rosicrucian magician whose skill exceeded that of Mathers or Crowley. And Alice Anotherbible, the oddity who had been ''too'' successful.

Trump cards weren’t only valuable when actually used.

Think of them like nuclear weapons.

Showing them off without using them could restrict an adversary’s actions.

…In truth, Coronzon’s greatest concern was Alice. She couldn’t accurately judge the threat level of that girl. And there was no such thing as a surefire countermeasure against an unknown.

She wanted to escape as soon as possible and eliminate any trace of her path. Even if it meant tearing down any obstacles that got in her way.

She truly felt that way.

Yet she didn’t do it.

After coming all this way.

“Oops,” she said quietly, pressing against the back of a thick roadside tree.

She had spotted a few figures on the large street. Their odd dress made them seem not a part of this world and they held a variety of spiritual items that ignored the laws against weapons and any sense of realism. That was definitely the gear of those who were “in the know”. These had to be the filthy Anglican magicians.

Had they gotten ahead of her? How? Could they have sprouted wings and flown over her head?

No, they had used a more normal method.

(Cars. Maybe I should steal one next.)

They must have assumed there would be no ordinary vehicles out since people had been ordered to stay in. They had abandoned some vans and trucks in the middle of the three-lane street.

Killing a hundred or even a thousand magicians would be easy enough.

But the rules had changed.

Now that she was trying to escape without being found, her power as a great demon actually hindered her. Anything she did would mean using a major spell, so it was best not to use anything if she could avoid it.

To reiterate, the ideal result was to escape ''quietly''.

That was also why she had “shaken” Nephthys and Niang-Niang instead of immediately killing them with brute force.

“But this is odd…”

She slipped from the tree to a building wall.

Coronzon whispered to herself as she observed the situation on the street.

Kamijou Touma’s side had been precise. Too precise. They had to know her goal was to escape outside Academy City, but they shouldn’t have had any way of detecting what route she would use to cross the wall. After all, the wall surrounded the city in all 360 degrees. So how had they known she was going north to escape into the Saitama area from District 3?

(It wasn’t the security cameras, security robots, and other parts of Academy City’s security network. I already took out Board Chairman Accelerator. And the Anglican magicians have made an awkward takeover of Academy City’s systems, but they couldn’t operate those scientific toys with such precision. That must mean…)

At first, she considered a magical searching method.

Especially when Alice Anotherbible and Anna Sprengel and their extraordinary magic power were in the city. Not to mention that Grimoire Library Index and Magic God Othinus could provide the knowledge.

But then she shook her head.

Because she had arrived at a simpler possibility.

Coronzon’s eyes lowered to her hands.

(Could I have left a hint behind?)

“Aleister… ''How long were you in control of my body''!?”

===Part 3===

Shortly before that, Takitsubo Rikou made her suggestion in District 7.

“Scent.”

Kanzaki was dubious.

It was written plain on her face that she didn’t see how something so ordinary could work.

The track suit girl emotionlessly continued.

“She might be able to easily erase any footprints she leaves, but ''completely'' eliminating the scent particles left in the air is no easy task. After all, your own body is the source of the scent.”

Kamijou looked straight up.

The red snow had stopped and there was no wind, so there was little concern of those particles being swept away.

Coronzon had scattered the thick clouds herself.

Her own actions were beginning to work against her.

“Also, I think it will be a fairly distinctive scent. Instead of just the scent of her hair or clothing, it should be an aroma intentionally left behind.”

“Hm? Why would Coronzon do that?”

“She wouldn’t. But the other one would.”

Did she mean Aleister?

“Scents are invisible. And once you think of something as your own scent, it becomes especially hard for you to detect,” said Othinus.

“It would be a convenient way to tell us where Coronzon is without her noticing,” said Anna Sprengel.

Kamijou tilted his head.

“But what distinctive scent would it be?”

“Probably the snowdrop flower,” replied Takitsubo.

For some reason, this led Kanzaki Kaori to lower her head glumly.

The track suit girl continued with no readable emotion in her eyes.

“It isn’t the best material for an aroma when compared to roses or lavender, but…um, did something occur to you?”

“It’s the title of an erotic novel Crowley wrote around a century ago. Or part of the title, to be more accurate.”

Everyone fell silent.

Alice Anotherbible looked confused.

Humanity might meet its doom before the sun rose in the morning, yet they had run across a choice that may have been serious or may have been a joke in poor taste… Kamijou was certain now. Aleister was definitely still alive.

“But, Touma, how do we follow the scent? A scent…hm, could we use a dog?”

Index sounded disappointed that she only had a calico cat in her arms, but her comment led everyone to look to the dog among them.

At the center of attention, golden retriever Kihara Noukan tilted his head while sitting.

“I do appreciate you consider me reliable, but the world will be destroyed if I screw this up, correct? This is a situation for cautious verification, not my brand of romance. And I would feel bad stealing all of your thunder.”

“Then we can use something else too.”

Takitsubo waved her phone.

But it had an eraser-sized device attached to the connector at the bottom.

“Smelling bad can be considered a form of harassment these days, so they sell these toys for a personal hygiene check. Although I heard they were really just finding ways to expand into other markets because selling breathalyzers wasn’t enough to make back the development costs.”

“But a commercial product won’t be enough to track someone,” said Othinus. “To do that, you should need to expand the hardware or boost the software to forcibly increase its sensitivity.”

“Right.”

Takitsubo tossed her phone over.

To Misaka Mikoto, who could do just about anything when it came to electricity.

“When scent particles adhere to the sensor, they are analyzed into digital values. It’s not glamorous, but the technology has been used in food and detergent labs for decades. And I’d heard there was a special forces team that used this kind of thing in Academy City, but I have no idea what they’re up to now.”

That meant they could track her.

They didn’t know how long Aleister’s hint would last.

They needed to take advantage of it before Coronzon caught on.

Kanzaki waved and the young Amakusas responded. They brought in several vehicles with chains on their tires to deal with the red snow.

“Now we can track her.”

Just like the ritual used by hammer throwers to intentionally push past their own limiters, Kamijou Touma shouted from the bottom of his gut.

Because his body was ready to break if he didn’t.

“We can settle things with Great Demon Coronzon!!”

===Part 4===

She wasn’t even aware of the moments when he took control and she couldn’t question the lapse afterwards.

This was a major problem for Coronzon…but at the same time, it was fortunate she had become aware of the risk sooner rather than later. Even a single second of unconsciousness during a battle could create a fatal opening.

She needed a technical solution.

But for now, she had to lose the nearby pursuers.

Kamijou Touma’s group would arrive in District 3 before long. In pursuit of her. If Aleister had used her body to leave behind a message, there was no doubting it.

(Could I make it if I rushed across the wall from District 3? No. Kamijou Touma is one thing, but the Anglicans are a group. With their coordination, they could have someone waiting there. And this doesn’t actually end after I cross the wall. If they know which direction I escaped to, I can’t disappear and they will continue pursuing me through the Saitama area.)

That meant adopting brute force methods to cross the wall would not solve this. Coronzon’s ideal was to ''quietly'' cross the wall and vanish into the greater world beyond. But this also gave her an opportunity. If her pursuers were convinced she would cross the wall from District 3, she could fully lose them if she crossed the wall from a different district.

She didn’t have much time left.

What could she do in that time?

===Part 5===

“She’s not here?” muttered Kamijou.

They were in District 3, a dead office area where even the traffic signals were off. It was a district for adults, so a high schooler like Kamijou didn’t know it very well. The message Aleister had left by hijacking Coronzon’s body had definitely pointed in this direction. And yet…

“The scent trail ends here,” said Kihara Noukan, sniffing at the ground.

“Confirmed,” said Takitsubo Rikou, her phone in hand.

They were in an empty plaza with nothing there but red snow.

Index tilted her head.

“Did Coronzon notice what was happening and wash it off?”

“Could she wash it off completely enough?”

“She didn’t need to.” Mourning clothes Mikoto breathed a white sigh. “Scents become something entirely different when they mix together. Which is why I really wish they would stop using cheap floral scents in shampoos and body soaps. It reacts with perfumes, ruining their scent.”

Apparently there were other opinions too.

Some were concerned that this hadn’t been Coronzon’s doing.

“Could the message from Aleister itself have been a bluff? I mean, this is Aleister we’re talking about.”

Agnese may have been pushed forward by the many other nuns. She expressed this suspicion as their representative, but Kamijou rejected it.

He had no proof, of course.

But he didn’t want to think that the Aleister who had answered his call would then take Coronzon’s side and try to destroy the world with her.

(What if?)

Kamijou lowered his head.

He pondered the issue with a hand on his chin and his eyes staring down toward his shoes.

(If the message from Aleister was correct and we still lost sight of Coronzon…then one of our assumptions must be wrong. But what could that be?)

Then it hit him.

“I forgot. One basic fact completely slipped my mind.”

“?”

Kanzaki gave him a puzzled look, but he didn’t even glance her way.

He used his foot to scrape the red snow away from the ground, but it wasn’t asphalt below.

He found a thick metal manhole.

All that thought hadn’t been necessary. The answer was so simple!

The loud roar of water rushing by below meant this probably wasn’t an ordinary sewer. It had to be an artificial waterway flowing by below the city.

Humans could not swim in a half-frozen river in January.

Humans could not breathe underwater.

So this couldn’t be called a route. The river wasn’t usable.

Yes, ''if'' you were human.

“''But Great Demon Coronzon isn’t human''!!”

===Part 6===

The water temperature was 2 degrees.

The width was around five meters and the depth was maybe a few meters. Even with microbes and other factors producing some heat, this was a half-frozen January river. If an ordinary human fell in, their life would be at risk.

Of course, that was only for an ordinary human.

“It doesn’t apply to me.”

As she had announced from the beginning, she was a great demon.

Not even the moonlight could reach this place below the city. The ceiling was about two meters up, so a large man would bump his head on that thick concrete.

Maybe there were different areas that required different authorizations to enter and maybe the divisions were out of convenience for the government, but fences and chain-link doors blocked off the passage in places. Coronzon only had to lazily wave her hand to slice right through them.

The rippling water was a deep dark color, but not just because this was a subterranean space ruled by darkness. Jagged metal and what looked like rotting lumber were floating by. One squishy object looked to be a clump of oil larger than a bowling ball.

Great Demon Coronzon sighed in exasperation at herself for hesitating even momentarily.

(Places like this are my proper home. An embodiment of evil shouldn’t avoid impurities. Maybe I spent too long playing the bright and shining Anglican Archbishop.)

This time, she jumped in.

Once the torrent took her away, she would leave District 3 and travel through Districts 14, 19, and 12 to reach the eastern wall bordering the Shinjuku area. That was an entirely different place from the northern wall bordering the Saitama area.

(I don’t know what scent you sprayed on me, Aleister, but now those scent particle can’t be tracked to me.)

Of course, an ordinary human would die before riding the current even 100 meters, but that was no obstacle for Coronzon. She would have no trouble taking this 10+ kilometer water slide.

===Part 7===

Aleister hadn’t lied.

She had been in District 3.

It was a failure on Kamijou’s group’s part that let her escape. They had been wrong to think they could capture Great Demon Coronzon if they surrounded her the same way they would a human. If you were trying to capture a bird or a fish, blockading the roads and setting up checkpoints like you would with a human wouldn’t accomplish much of anything.

Coronzon had thrown herself into the artificial waterway below the city so she could quickly travel long distances.

“The water is two degrees…and she just jumped in?”

Mourning clothes Mikoto couldn’t believe it.

Her phone wouldn’t give her that data, so she may have used her power to hack the river management network. The thing that let you check river water levels during a typhoon.

“The waterway branches out quite complexly. The water generally flows west to east, but it covers a wide area. Predicting her final destination isn’t going to be easy.”

Kanzaki’s assessment didn’t provide any valuable hints.

They didn’t even need to head down underground. They knew Coronzon was using the waterway, but unlike her, they were human. Jumping into filthy half-frozen 2-degree water and letting it carry them for more than 10 kilometers wouldn’t let them track down Coronzon.

“What about the girl?”

“No, Alice.”

Kamijou quickly stopped her.

Alice Anotherbible might be able to survive down there, but that didn’t mean she could catch Coronzon in the endlessly branching waterway. The return was too uncertain for such a definite risk.

They had to come up with some other way.

Even now, Coronzon was being carried rapidly below the city.

Toward some part of the outer wall.

Takitsubo Rikou made a quick decision after simply peaking into the subterranean world through the open manhole.

“We can’t track the scent particles anymore.”

But if they gave up, Coronzon would escape.

Without another hint, humanity was doomed.

“That’s no problem…right? Science isn’t everything. Hey, Index, what ever happened to the magical search methods!? If we try a different approach, we can still-!”

“Touma, what are we supposed to track her with? Some of Coronzon’s blood or hair would be perfect. And if we are going to do it, some more detailed information on that great demon would be helpful.”

Despite the situation – no, because of the situation, Index gave a calm and composed response.

“The famous Aleister Crowley would be one thing…but Coronzon is from the world of myth. Finding detailed information on her will not be easy,” said Anna Sprengel, who seemed fairly legendary herself.

They couldn’t use magic.

But Kanzaki Kaori, commander of the Anglican forces here, wasn’t done.

“There is still something we can do.”

===Part 8===

A large metal object was lowered into the concrete waterway, covering the full width of the dark subterranean space. This wasn’t just grating or a floodgate. This was more brutal. The closest comparison was a giant propeller. But this had several of them arranged along a single shaft to smash up and break down floating objects.

“A public garbage disposal, huh?”

It was more than just the heavy rotating blades. To keep the thick blades sharp, metal-degrading bacteria were made to live on the net-like surface.

She had seen jagged metal and rotting lumber several times on the way here. None of that large trash could be allowed out of the city when the river water flowed out. To prevent any chance of the city’s technology leaking out. So devices to smash up whatever was floating in the river had been placed at regular intervals (and there were likely specialized facilities nearer to the outer wall). The Anglican pursuers in control of Academy City had activated them all.

Coronzon pulled her upper body onto the concrete edge and held her other hand out toward the giant machine.

Destroying it would be easy. It wouldn’t take more than a moment.

But she wanted to avoid triggering an alarm that would inform her pursuers where she was.

That left only one thing to do.

“So the easy ride ends here.”

Coronzon crawled fully out of the filthy water.

There were no signs telling her where to go, but she found some stairs leading up. Still wet, she placed her hand on the railing and got moving.

(I should assume they are guiding me to an extent. It may soon be time to switch to brute force tactics.)

Which district was she in?

She would know as soon as she opened the thick metal door.

===Part 9===

Kamijou heard something like the breathing of a monster.

Something white was being expelled from the pipes on the wall or the metal grate on the ground.

It was hot steam.

This was District 19.

“Hey, Kanzaki. Are you sure Coronzon is here?”

“Assuming the emergency exit sensor was triggered by her. She isn’t an embodiment of science, after all.”

Kamijou spent most of his time in District 7, so he didn’t know much about this one. It was crammed full of short multi-tenant buildings. Overall, the streets looked old and faded. Non-LCD signs had a variety of advertisements posted, but the advertised products were things like cathode-ray tubes, vacuum tubes, records, and steam engines…

“It feels like we’re surrounded by a collection of forgotten technology. Or like the flow of technology branched off and evolved in a unique direction here.”

Mourning clothes Mikoto seemed half taken aback by it all.

A device with several rotating cloth wings slowly passed by on the street. It wasn’t quite a helicopter or a drone. And it was larger than a small truck.

Kamijou looked like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“What is that? One of da Vinci’s models?”

“Uneducated fool, that is Cayley’s steam-powered flying machine.”

…Had designs for flying cars been around for centuries?

Whatever the case, technology was branching off in weird directions here.

(On any other day, I’d love to explore this place.)

Several giant round metal objects were visible in the distance.

In fact, several of the round things were clustered together.

“Looks like a pack of takoyaki.”

Index was right. That was the best comparison Kamijou could come up with too.

It looked a bit like a gas tank – no, a gas holder, but in District 19, that wouldn’t be what it was.

“The Central Boiler,” explained Takitsubo Rikou. “The fuel is burned in a single location to produce a large quantity of steam and then piped out across the district. There is infrastructure for the excess energy produced by a large factory’s boiler to be sent to smaller factories, but this is a larger scale version of that. So maybe like a steam version of the thermal power stations in the age of electricity?”

Of course, Academy City’s power generation was done with the many wind turbines distributed across the city. This produced steam instead of electricity, it was centralized instead of distributed, and it created energy using fossil fuel…

Othinus sighed in exasperation from Kamijou’s shoulder.

“The people of this district must really not want to follow the mainstream of Academy City.”

===Part 10===

“And.”

Great Demon Coronzon was also grinning. It only took her an instant to detonate it from the outside.

“That gives me an opportunity.”

===Part 11===

A deep, muffled sound rumbled out.

The city distance looked white.

Like the cityscape was being obscured by a giant piece of cotton candy.

But that wasn’t what this was.

The exhausted, late-night city had been overwritten. Kamijou definitely saw something pop like a balloon in that white-covered scenery. Even though the thick steel shouldn’t have been able to burst from within like that.

Wasn’t that…?

“Run, fool.”

“Hey, don’t tell me…”

“Coronzon blew up the Central Boiler,” said Anna Sprengel. “Steam of more than 400 degrees Celsius is about to engulf this district. And we will be swallowed up along with it!”

“If we stay outside, the outdoor steam oven will remove all the oil from our bodies as it boils us up nice and healthily. Just like the chicken tenderloins you parboiled for me,” said Kihara Noukan. “If that does not appeal to you, I would recommend hurrying indoors.”

There wasn’t time to think too hard about it.

Kamijou and the others rushed to the nearest concrete structure.

The deep, muffled noise had grown sharper. A lot like the sizzling of water on a heated frying pan. Which wasn’t that far off from the truth. The red snow on the ground was melting, starting from the distance. And the growing mass of steam discolored the roadside trees and peeled the paint from the cars parked on the curb. Like playground equipment in a long abandoned park.

Anna Sprengel and Kihara Noukan were right. A human wouldn’t last an instant in that.

Index, Mikoto, Kanzaki, Anna Sprengel, Alice, and Agnese rushed inside the same building as Kamijou. Othinus and the cat were with them too. The others would have escaped to different buildings.

Kamijou’s eyes widened.

“Who is she!?”

“Don’t ask me! Why was an ordinary person – and a student at that – wandering around outside at this hour!? And after we ordered everyone to stay at home!”

That meant the girl held under Kanzaki’s arm was not a camouflaged Amakusa.

After diving into the reinforced concrete building, Kamijou kicked the door shut from his position down on the ground.

A scorching sound soon followed.

A male voice came from the radio Kanzaki held. It didn’t seem magical.

Was that one of the Anglican magicians managing Academy City? No, it may have been one of the city’s technicians obeying the magicians.

“Boiler #2…and #8 have already…no, it’s no use, it’s fully ruptured!!”

“#5 isn’t looking good either…the boiler pressure won’t stop- we need to evacuate now!!”

An unpleasant straining sound surrounded them.

The entire building was groaning.

Was the great heat causing the metal to bend, or was it the steam pressure?

“Damn!” cursed Kamijou.

Either way, this made running outside and catching up to Coronzon a complete impossibility. That world of 400 degrees Celsius was melting the asphalt of the streets, so they would need to walk on the sidewalk tiles with thick shoes or else suffer severe burns. In fact, if a human simply took a step outside, their flesh, bones, and eyeballs would boil.

''But Great Demon Coronzon wasn’t human.

They had been taught this lesson over and over now…but could she really brute force her way through like this? What route would she use to escape in that world of scorching heat and death!?

===Part 12===

“District 19’s Central Boiler just exploded!?”

Yomikawa Aiho of Anti-Skill’s eyes widened at that report.

(First those Anglican people take over the city’s law enforcement and now this!?)

She didn’t even need to check the camera footage on the helicopter’s multipurpose monitor.

From her vantage point in the night sky, one section of the surface was visibly expanding. The scale was hard to judge, but the buildings being easily engulfed had to be more than ten stories tall.

The male helicopter pilot adjusted his grip on the control column and asked a question.

“Is this that Coronzon person’s doing too? What the hell!? Aren’t fugitive’s supposed to hold their breath and sneak around!? Why would she go out of her way to cause a scene like this!?”

“Just get us there! Who knows how many people were caught in the blast!”

“I’ll try, but there’s honestly only so much we can do from the air!”

Several shouting voices came over the radio at once, ignoring the aviation radio rules. The pilot was using the radio to pickup as many signals as he could, hoping to get some picture of the situation on the inside.

“Where are the first-aid kits!? Why can’t I find one!?”

“Damn, more burns. There are too many injuries here!! Can someone tell me how I’m supposed to triage this!?”

“We can’t do it in that steam. It’s 400 degrees. We can’t even get close to the storeroom!!”

Yomikawa Aiho glanced aside.

First-aid kits could be found just about anywhere. There was even one belted to the helicopter’s wall. Was the chaos and confusion inside the Central Boiler so bad they couldn’t even find something so basic?

Yes, she had what they needed here.

The pilot must have wanted to help them too, but he gave his expert opinion.

“It’s not happening, Yomikawa! You can see that boiling steam, can’t you!? The steam pressure is disturbing the air currents near the ground too badly to land! If we carelessly descend now, the helicopter will be flipped over on its side!”

“Then what about an ambulance!? If we can’t go by air, we can send someone by ground!”

“What part of ‘boiling steam’ didn’t you understand? An ambulance is little more than an ordinary vehicle, so it just isn’t tough enough. Everyone inside would be steamed to death before they arrived. At 400 degrees, not only would the rubber tires melt, but the asphalt would probably be soft and squishy. Any vehicles will be stuck and the steam getting in through the air conditioning vents would bring the high temps inside too.”

“Then we’ll just have to make do with the helicopter. I know, let’s simulate it!! If we feed the satellite data into the quantum computers and DNA computers, those air current disturbances aren’t an obstacle!”

“How do we do that with the Board Chairman out of commission!? He’s the only one who can use the Master Key!!”

“Kh.”

“We can’t use the satellites, supercomputers, or any other Academy City facilities. Maybe we could use the individual devices, but we can’t tie them together. So my pointstands: it’s not happening, Yomikawa!!”

The helicopter could not descend as the Central Boiler continued to explode.

But voices were calling out for help.

Even an ordinary first-aid kit would be able to save the lives of the people injured by the burning heat and steam.

Yomikawa Aiho saw only one option.

“Then I just won’t use the helicopter.”

“Hey, Yomikawa?”

“You don’t have to do anything crazy. I’ll use this parachute to jump down on my own.”

“Are you stupid!? I said this 5.5 ton piece of metal would be flipped over on its side! You’ll lose all control over a parachute made of flimsy cloth in no time at- wait, no, you idiot!!”

She didn’t bother listening to the end.

Yomikawa Aiho grabbed the first-aid kit in both hands and threw herself out the open side door.

Without hesitation.

It went well. At first.

But 180 seconds after the parachute opened at an altitude of around 20 meters, things rapidly changed. The air current disturbance hit her like a punch from the side. Her neck hurt. She gritted her teeth and tried to restore her balance, but the winds buffeting her from all sides spun her parachute around.

All this and she hadn’t even been directly exposed to the steam. In the last few meters, her parachute turned completely inside out and she landed on some kind of machine. Only after her body badly dented the thin metal panel did she realize it was an industrial air conditioning unit. It had apparently absorbed the force of her landing.

The first-aid kit clutched to her chest had survived too.

Despite the burns and lacerations they must have suffered, the workers ran toward her. Ignoring their own woes and looking worried for her.

The Anti-Skill woman was truly glad she had come to help them.

She pressed the first-aid kit into the chest of a battered-looking worker.

“Are any of your people missing?”

“Th-the chief isn’t here, but his time card shows no record of him arriving. I think he took the night off without calling in…”

Then no need to worry about him.

“No ambulances are coming.”

She made sure they knew their situation.

“I doubt the fire trucks can make it either. So we have to prevent any further harm from the Central Boiler on our own. Where should we start!?”

Something exploded. Very close by.

She heard something whiz past her and felt something sharply stroke her cheek. A pipe must have burst from the internal pressure and a shard the size of a guitar pick had grazed her face.

No one could predict what would explode or when.

As the giant facility collapsed, it was like a single big balloon.

“Just one more…” said a young man, barely breathing. No, he was probably gathering all the strength he could. “Eight boilers make up the giant overall boiler and two of them have already blown. If just one more goes, there will be no stopping it. The reinforced concrete surrounding the place will collapse from the extreme steam pressure!”

“Then that’s what we have to deal with,” said Yomikawa.

“We can’t. We don’t know what happened to the general steam control room. No one can get there. Pipes have burst all throughout the building, so there’s hot steam everywhere!”

“Then I’ll go and check!!”

They could have just told her where that general steam control room was, but a few of the workers whose injuries were relatively minor came with her.

They all wanted to stop this tragedy if they could. Despite saying they couldn’t, they hadn’t given up.

Yomikawa Aiho smiled a little.

“Lead the way.”

She dove into danger.

She was no one special.

Today might finally be the day she died.

''However,'' that was no reason to not protect the Central Boiler and District 19.

===Part 13===

They couldn’t head outside thanks to the intense steam.

Only Coronzon, who had caused the disaster, could move freely in it. They just didn’t know if she would take the subway, the sewers, or what.

Kamijou clenched his teeth.

“We can’t just stand around here. Coronzon must even now be working to cross the wall and escape the city!”

Was there a loophole anywhere? Or a safety measure that would let them travel through the ultra-hot steam? The idea sounded too absurd to even consider, but then someone spoke up.

The girl who Kanzaki had picked up somewhere.

“…in the car.”

Kamijou had a bad feeling about this.

This definitely wasn’t a hint.

The words oozed with an ominous air that made him reluctant to hear the rest.

“My parents are still in the car. They said the city is too dangerous to stay, but then we got stuck in the red snow. I didn’t want to hear them arguing, so I got out of the car on my own. Then that steam came, so they’re probably still in there…”

…In all that steam?

Othinus and Anna Sprengel made an honest simulation rather than being weirdly considerate.

“Even in this thick reinforced concrete building, the door could buckle or the windows could break at any time. And if we’re talking about an ordinary car with no bulletproofing or blast resistance…”

“Fool, even if they covered the A/C vents with balled-up cloth, I’m not sure how long a car with windows on all sides would last. And once the windows break, the people inside will be exposed to the 400-degree steam.”

…Kamijou himself had seen the tough paint peeling off of cars. A human wouldn’t last ten seconds exposed to that.

Kanzaki’s eyes widened.

“It’s past midnight! Why would someone be out at this hour!? Especially when the entire city was ordered to stay in!”

“Because the Anglican grip on the city is weakening. Even as we speak.”

Kamijou gave a calm response to Kanzaki’s shouted question.

Maybe it was hard to grasp for a Saint who lived a proper life day in and day out, but human beings tended to want to do the things they were told not to do. All the more once the authority holding them back loosened its grip. Or once they found a loophole.

“I succumbed to temptation. I couldn’t resist.” Mourning clothes Mikoto scratched her cheek. “Phrases like that have existed since ancient times, which tells you a lot about human nature.”

“It’s not that. …They were just willing to try anything if it would keep their precious family safe.”

“Fool,” curtly called Anna Sprengel.

He didn’t need to hear any more. That magician used her wickedness as a great weapon, so he knew what she was trying to say.

If Coronzon was allowed to escape the city here and now, the entire 7 or 8 billion population of the Earth would be headed toward its doom. Once the process started, no one could stop it.

So they couldn’t afford to lose track of her.

They couldn’t stop to save a couple of unrelated people in the middle of the fight against Coronzon.

He knew that.

He really did, but…

“It’ll be alright.”

The next thing he knew, Kamijou Touma was kneeling down in front of the small girl.

And doing the opposite of Anna’s unspoken advice.

Because it was the right thing to do.

“There are a lot of different people here – the Anglicans, the Amakusas, some who were originally Roman Catholic, and even a Magic God and some Transcendents – but none of them are going to abandon you. Because every one of us are here because we want to help people.”

He just had to remember what kind of being Great Demon Coronzon was.

She tore people apart from each other and kept humanity from reaching magical knowledge.

So this was another side of the battle.

In the fight against Coronzon, they would continue to encounter frustratingly malicious “coincidences” as well as trouble and accidents that seemed designed to test them. Because that was the kind of being she was. Just like there was an angel of love and an angel of righteousness and just like there was a demon of wrath and a demon of envy, she was the great demon who specialized in ''that sort of thing''.

He wouldn’t let those bonds be torn asunder.

…An emergency? An urgent situation? The entire human race’s doom would be assured once the dawn arrived? He still wasn’t going to give up on being human. He couldn’t defeat Coronzon if he wasn’t willing to say that!!

No one stopped him.

Not Index, not Misaka Mikoto, not Kanzaki Kaori, not Agnese Sanctis, not Alice Anotherbible, and not even Anna Sprengel who had given him her advice as a wicked woman.

They had all fought against Coronzon.

“I promise you everything will be alright. We’re going to save your parents right now!!”

===Part 14===

Yomikawa Aiho clicked her tongue.

The equipment in the Central Boiler’s general steam control room had survived, but none of the six remaining boilers responded to anything they did in that room lined with the CRT monitors only found in this district.

One of the workers explained.

“The equipment here is all working. It isn’t malfunctioning, but the steam isn’t reaching the condensers… My guess is the distribution board is to blame. We need to head there and fix it.”

“Distribution board?”

Even as Yomikawa asked, she realized it had to be like a fuse box but for steam instead of electricity.

“Where is it? Tell me and I’ll go check it!”

“But…”

“There’s no time! Which is going to take more work: a small distribution board on the wall or this entire giant general steam control room? And to be blunt, it doesn’t look like there’s much for me to do here!!”

The worker nodded a few times at that.

“I’ll sketch you a simple map. Thanks. The boilers can’t stand this much pressure for long. We’ll have a chain reaction of ruptures in the surviving ones soon!”

Yomikawa Aiho grabbed her radio and stepped out the door.

There was so much white steam.

Had the damage to the facility progressed since she arrived in the room?

The 400-degree steam burst from the walls and ceiling as sharp as blades. Even if it didn’t directly hit her, it made the entire space as hot as a sauna. She wouldn’t be killed right away, but it was sapping her stamina.

The spraying steam made it hard to hear the voice from the radio. But then a loud voice came from the facility’s speakers.

“I’m amazed you decided to rush in here with everything going on. Personally, I have half a mind to run away.”

“But you haven’t run away, have you? So we’re not that different. You see, I have some ''freeloaders'' living with me and I want to protect their home. With people’s lives in my care, I can’t half-ass it.”

(Can’t go this way either.)

Even on the way to the general steam control room, they had encountered a few unopenable metal doors. Instead of the force of the explosion bending the doors, it seemed like they were automatic doors that used steam rather than electricity to open. That meant all the steam erupting from the pipes worked against her. Without sufficient pressure supplied to the doors, they couldn’t open. It was actually an adaption of a 2000-year-old invention known as Heron’s steam turbine.

She broke the hinges with her gun and kicked down the door.

That was a convenient tool for opening any door in here, but firing too recklessly could break a thin pipe and trigger a steam explosion nearby.

Something the size of a rugby ball – probably some kind of drone – was ejecting steam to weave across the floor.

The steam-powered lift was unusable. Yomikawa grabbed some rags from the ground and used them like potholders to grab the metal ladder. Several things exploded as she climbed. Sharp shards flew like flying disks and stabbed into the wall much too close for comfort.

The steam obscured her vision more than she had expected.

She had a hastily sketched map, but she felt like she would get lost even with it.

And she wasn’t looking for a special room. It was only a thin metal box attached to a corridor wall.

Finally, she found it.

“That must be the distribution board!!”

“It’s simple enough to operate. Open the cover and you should see 16 levers. Since our commands aren’t getting through, something must have moved some of the levers. Maybe one of the explosions and maybe the vibration of the steam hitting the wall. The levers have two options: up or down. The pattern we want is YNYNYYYNYNNYYYNY. Look for any that are wrong and flip them to the correct position. That should give us back control! And if you can, use tape or something to fix them in place!!”

She found them.

Three of the levers were in the wrong position.

“If I fix these…”

The ceiling exploded.

Yomikawa jumped back as the white steam passed sharply in front of her. Like a dropping guillotine or shutter. She could feel the 400-degree ferocity raising the air temperature in the corridor.

A voice practically screamed out of the speakers.

“Yomikawa-san! Please respond! Boiler #5 isn’t going to last much longer! You need to hurry!”

The worker couldn’t see the situation here. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have said that.

400-degree steam was blocking the way right in front of her. A human would be boiled to the bone by that. She couldn’t even entertain silly ideas about slipping through a gap in the erupting steam.

But if someone didn’t do it, the boiler would rupture. Then the reinforced concrete barrier surrounding them at 3 kilometers would be destroyed by the steam pressure. And everyone working so hard to prevent that would be obliterated along with it.

Could she really let that happen?

(I think this really might be the end for me.)

Yomikawa Aiho honestly accepted that.

But the distribution board was within arm’s reach. Operate that and she could save everyone.

So she had to act.

Misaka Worst, Last Order…and Accelerator.

Academy City was far from a peaceful utopia. It had plenty of flaws. But this was the city that had raised those children. They deserved to smile after everything that had been taken from them. She couldn’t just go, ‘Welp, the city’s destroyed, so that’s that. Bye.” and leave the debt unpaid.

She was afraid to die. Which was why Yomikawa Aiho reminded herself she wanted to be the kind of person who could look those kids in the eye.

So move. Do it.

She was Anti-Skill. She had to focus only on protecting the city.

===Part 15===

They had decided to rescue the ordinary people trapped in a car out on the street.

Hiding inside a reinforced concrete building, mourning clothes Mikoto was the first to speak up.

“The biggest problem with the steam outside is the immense heat and pressure.”

“That’s two problems,” complained Kamijou.

“No, it’s one. The heat is what causes the moisture to expand and produce steam. And that expansion is what creates enough pressure to destroy concrete walls.”

It was important to confirm the basic facts of the situation.

The only flaw was how learning the extent of their hopelessness depressed him so much.

But Kanzaki, who was listening in, saw things differently.

“So we just have to cool it. Is that what you’re saying? The solution is simple. If we cool all that steam, it will return to harmless drops of water.”

Everyone would say that wasn’t possible.

After all, there was enough steam to engulf an entire district. And it was over 400 degrees Celsius. That was hot enough to melt car tires and soften asphalt. Dumping a bucket of water on it wasn’t going to cut it.

“But her logic itself isn’t wrong,” said Othinus.

“Fool. That kind of logic is a crucial condition for magicians. It may look like we can do anything, but we actually achieve our desired result by following a set of laws not found in your chemistry or physics textbooks,” added Anna Sprengel.

Kanzaki listened in while spreading out a large piece of paper on a table.

“We need a simple Christian legend related to cooling. I would suggest St. Dorothea and Theophilus. Agnese, may I borrow a few of your Catholic nuns?”

“Could subordinates like us say no if we wanted to? But that story is the opposite of what you want. The legend says the fresh roses and apples were delivered in the freezing February winter.”

“Which is why we reverse it by adjusting the symbols. Index.”

“That should be easy.”

And they only needed the logic to be sound.

No matter how absurd it looked, they only needed to have “correctness” on their side.

Kanzaki Kaori boldly made her claim.

“From there, I can force it through with my power as a Saint.”

At first, Kamijou thought a machinegun was firing outside.

But no.

Rain was pouring down outside the window. The white steam filling the district was instantly cooled into drops of water. There was so much of it it seemed like the weather had completely changed.

They had altered the scenery itself. The logic may have been sound, but the scale was something else entirely. How many tens of thousands of tons of liquid nitrogen would you need to cause this?

Kamijou felt silly even trying to calculate it.

“This won’t last long… Let’s head out!!”

He didn’t need to be told twice.

But once outside, he found a brown muddy river.

He had stepped down out of the building on pure momentum, but now he couldn’t take another step forward. Everything below his hips felt wrong. If he didn’t keep a hand on the wall and watch his step, he would be dragged down and swept away by the water. He was pretty sure only Alice would be able to stand in this muddy current without difficulty.

The car in question was less than 100 meters away.

Yet getting their was no easy task.

“I think you overdid it!! This is going to wash the car away!”

“This was the only way to keep the hot steam from boiling us!! Everything we do is on the level of changing the weather or dropping a shooting star from the sky!”

The scale of everything with Saints was off the charts.

Kamijou nearly stumbled on the way, but not just because of the current. Something was wrong with the ground. The melted asphalt may have re-hardened in the wrong shape.

Kamijou and Index somehow managed to reach the light car that was rocking like a small boat. The weird round car’s engine compartment looked like a metal drum on its side. Since this was District 19, did it run on steam? No, the lack of smokestack suggested it used coal instead.

Somewhat exasperated, Othinus spoke up from his shoulder.

“If it was a car that used a huge battery to power heating elements that heat water into steam to power the car, it would have been a high-tech eco car.”

This was the part that worried Kamijou.

“The car’s partially submerged, so touching it isn’t going to give me an electric shock, is it? Damn…”

Something banged on the glass from the inside.

Someone was in there. Two someones. Just like the girl had said. Hard to tell if they were more afraid of the steam or the muddy river, though.

(I’m risking my life here too. But I made it this far, so I’m going to save them!!)

The car’s doors weren’t going to open outwards while partially submerged like this. Kamijou grabbed a branch floating down the muddy river and climbed up onto the car’s hood. Sensing his weight, the car’s alarm started beeping, but now wasn’t the time to complain about that. This was probably being recorded by the drive recorder, but he still swung his makeshift bat down towards the windshield.

He smashed right through it, but that wasn’t enough and Kanzaki moved in to tear the rest out along with its frame.

She practically clung to the survivors to drag them out of the car.

The car itself slid sideways, pulled by the current.

It wasn’t going to last much longer.

Clinging to a tree a short distance away, Anna Sprengel shouted over at them.

“With this powerful current, trudging back upstream would be inefficient. Fool, let the current take you! Take shelter in a different building downstream!!”

“Dammit, are you kidding me!?”

He swore, but he was the one who had decided to save these people.

He just had to stick to it to the end.

He started to jump down from the car, but he was stopped by a tug on the back of his neck. Courtesy of Misaka Mikoto.

“Stay there.”

The car clearly moved below his feet. But with a stability not found when the current was pushing it sideways. Was that because he could sense a human will behind it? She must have been magnetically controlling it.

Something shifted out of the way below the water and it began to ride the current like a boat.

Something passed by overhead. He instinctually looked up…and felt his heart freeze when he realized it was a power line. Specifically, an exposed high-voltage line like those used by trains.

“Do they have a retro streetcar running in this area? What would’ve happened to us if that had snapped and fallen into the water?”

“Why is that your main concern when you’re traveling downstream with a billion-volt power source?” asked Mikoto.

The steam car bumped into the stairs at the bottom of a pedestrian overpass.

The muddy river would have prevented them from opening any ground floor doors even if they had wound up right alongside one. Instead, Kamijou, Index, Mikoto, and Kanzaki rushed inside what looked like a department store through the second floor entrance.

Kanzaki shouted into what looked like a paper charm.

“I will be ending the cooling spell’s effects, so everyone get inside a sturdy building! You have 10 seconds!!”

Her countdown was precise.

The white steam once more ruled the world. On the other side of the glass door was a world of deadly steam that would instantly boil a human being with a temperature of more than 400 degrees Celsius.

“While this is tempered security glass, the door could break at any moment. Let’s head further up.”

“What about Coronzon?”

While they dealt with this sidequest, she was free to act.

They had given her time.

So was she already past the wall?

If she had been freed into the wide world beyond, could they even find her? Kamijou felt more and more worried.

But just then…

“Ksshh…ey…”

He heard a sound.

No, a voice. From the small radio Kanzaki held.

“Hey! Please someone listen. This is the Central Boiler’s general steam control room. We somehow managed to keep the rest of the boilers from blowing. We have control of the pressure, so there’s no concern of any more steam escaping! Oh, but call the fire fighters and tell them to hurry!! The Anti-Skill officer helping us hasn’t returned!!”

“Oh, shut up. I’m still alive. Really, if you have fireproof suits for welding work, you should’ve told me. I nearly died.”

Kamijou took a look outside…and sure enough. The density of steam had fallen to little more than a thin fog. He could see things clearly outside. This had started out as a January night cold enough for snow. Without any additional steam, things would cool down on their own.

He and the others tried heading out.

It felt like a sauna. It was hot and humid enough to forget it was January. But it wasn’t enough to burn them. And the muddy river was gone.

Othinus took a look around from his shoulder.

“Looks like you can walk around outside now.”

“I guess it was the heat, but that red snow is gone from the ground.”

Probably a combination of the river and the sauna. Whatever the case, District 19 was clean.

“Fool.”

“Teacherrrr!”

The others caught up with them in the unpleasant steam.

And regrouping meant that girl had been reunited with her parents. The reunion took the form of a tearful embrace.

The steam was no longer a concern. That much was good news. But not all the news was good.

They had lost track of Coronzon. And they had no further clues.

His selfishness had come at a steep price.

Or so he thought, but he had underestimated things.

There were others here fighting.

“Also,” said a voice on the radio. “We have a report from the vicinity of the wall. You’re pursuing a fugitive, right? I don’t know who you’re after or why, but no one has crossed the wall. That much I’m confident of.”

“Eh?”

Several voices were talking.

It wasn’t just one person on the other side of the radio.

“A university research team was still gathering data with all this going on. They’re running a microscopic and macroscopic experiment where they scatter a sticky steam with high water retention over a wide area to see if it will efficiently stick to airborne pollutants, allowing them to be retrieved. What matters to you is that they can tell if someone approaches the wall by the change in the steam distribution. But they didn’t see anything.”

“Whoever it is must still be in the city. And if they’re not there, they must have turned around and gone to another district. Hurry up and catch them. We’d much prefer things to be peaceful around here.”

“The chief was stuck in his car? Oh, he can go to hell. He left his post without taking leave, so you tell him if he really wants to protect people, he needs to do his damn job. Now, if he were alone, I would just leave him out there, but his wife and daughter didn’t do anything wrong, so I guess we’ll have to help!!”

“Coronzon…didn’t approach the wall?”

It didn’t sound real even as Kamijou spoke the words.

But it was the truth.

…This wasn’t over yet.

He had gotten distracted. Taken a detour. Put the entire planet at risk. …Even so, it hadn’t been a complete waste. Small good deeds and kind acts were gathering together to accomplish something bigger.

Because Kamijou’s group had acted selflessly, now these other people were acting selflessly in return.

They were lending a hand.

The ring of cooperation was growing.

This was a weapon they had and Coronzon did not. …Or maybe it was her complete inability to acquire this that had broken her so badly.

Whatever the case, this wasn’t over.

If Coronzon hadn’t crossed the wall, then they could still pursue her!

Then someone voiced a quiet question.

That someone was Misaka Mikoto.

“But why did that Coronzon person move away from the wall?”

“?”

“If you want to escape, it’s human nature to want to run along the wall, right? The wall is right there and if you can get across, you win. But this Coronzon didn’t hesitate to distance herself from the wall. She went away. Heading toward the center of the city should only put her at more risk. What does she gain from this?”

Now that she mentioned it…

“Coronzon is actually trying to escape…isn’t she?” asked Kamijou.

“Yes, she is,” said Othinus. “Not being caught would be her actual top priority, but she must have a goal in mind. In that case, leaving Academy City probably is her priority.”

“But her actions contradict that.” Kihara Noukan joined the conversation. “Approaching the city center and extending her time in the city should only increase the risk of her being caught.”

“The wall might not actually matter,” cut in Index. The magic side girl provided a viewpoint entirely different from Kamijou and Mikoto. “It’s like you said before, Touma: Great Demon Coronzon isn’t human.”

“…?”

Coronzon’s actions were inconsistent.

That made some sense since fleeing after Adikalika failed hadn’t been her initial plan.

At the very least, this wasn’t all some grand plan she had conceived to deceive Kamijou and the others.

So if they wanted to stop her, they had to think up the kind of idea she would come up with but before she did. They were the pursuers. If they overlooked even one thing, she would use it to slip away.

In that sense, Index was bringing them another step closer to Coronzon.

“If you think of her as a collection of Telesma…then she doesn’t actually need to cross the physical wall to leave Academy City. She just has to break herself down into a mass of energy.”

“Hey, wait a second…”

His assumptions were crumbling around him.

Was that really an option?

Could you really just throw this new way of thinking into consideration!?

“Are you saying Coronzon can send herself, and her physical body too, through the city gas or the water pipes!?”

“I don’t know what ‘city gas’ is, but she probably can, yes,” said Index. Confidently. “If she hitches a ride on a ley line – a giant energy line running below the ground – she can’t just escape the city, she can escape to the other side of the planet!!”

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume13 Chapter3

2025-08-20T07:46:20Z

Churronzon: .

==Chapter 3: To Protect the World We Live In – Dance_With_ADIKALIKA.==

===Part 1===

“How long are we gonna be stuck here? I’m starving…” groaned Aogami Pierce.

He was in the District 10 crematorium.

They were quarantined inside.

There were some vending machines in the hallway, but about half the options on the bread machine had their red “sold out” lights lit. With the entire class there, a few dozen were forced to use the same vending machine, so it didn’t require the supplier to be falling behind on restocking the machine for it to be running out.

Every window and door was sealed from the outside with a thick bulletproof plastic. The only exit was gas-proof door protected by an air curtain, but it was guarded by a thick powered suit armed with a flamethrower. Whether it was powered suit’s doing or not, no one’s phones had a signal. The only smile was on Aogami Pierce’s Magical Powered Kanamin charm. The view out the windows was already dark. It was 8 PM. Aogami Pierce had been so busy with the funeral this morning that he feared he wouldn’t get a chance to claim the social network game rewards that had become a daily habit for him. He also hadn’t checked the video sites or online news. Falling behind the average person in information felt like being a step away from death for an otaku.

“And yet Kami-yan’s probably still walking around out there when he’s the one who caused all this. Then that woman who seemed in charge bit her tongue and was sent to the hospital and those middle-school-looking guests left too. What’s even the point of keeping us in here at this point?”

“Aside from that, something about this doesn’t feel right. They claim to be afraid of a microscopic infection or contaminant, but they haven’t brought in any kits for testing our blood or mucous membranes.”

Fukiyose Seiri tended to take the reasonable view and reject conspiratorial thinking, but for once she was pursuing it while choosing her words carefully.

Was there really an infection source here?

The crematorium staff and the part-time monk were starting to look skeptical as well. And if trust in Bio-Secure(?), the hosts in charge of the place, dropped, another thought would naturally begin to form.

They were up against a flamethrower-wielding group that kept their faces hidden. The group was highly organized, yet didn’t appear to be the official Anti-Skill.

…Was it really safe to go on obeying their instructions?

Then a sound came from outside the cloudy window.

It sounded like the rustling of a thicket being parted.

The powered suit stationed in front of the gas-proof door tilted its heads in a very human way and then contacted someone.

“B5a, you’re scheduled report is late. How long are you going to hang around out back? I can see your coordinates, so quit slacking off and respond.”

A short silence.

The mood changed.

“B5a? …A3b to C1d, B5a’s coordinates aren’t moving from around back. He’s even switched off his camera sharing, so what the hell is he up to? You’re outside, right? Just to be safe, I’m requesting a visual check.”

For some reason, Aogami Pierce looked to the window clouded by plastic, not the powered suit doing the talking.

He was curious.

What was that rustling sound he could hear coming from just outside?

Or maybe he had no real reason to expect anything and he was simply being guided by a curiosity about the unknown, a psychological tendency found even in ancient myths.

“H-hey? A3b to C1d, what’s wrong? Check in, all of you!”

There was nothing more than a sound like splitting wood. And not a thin piece of plywood either – this was the sound of a centuries-old tree being forcibly split down the center.

The powered suit guarding the gas-proof door contacted someone, shook his head, and then rushed outside.

Aogami Pierce looked puzzled.

“Huh? What’s he doing leaving his post? Could this be our chance to escape?”

“What if he returns right a-”

Fukiyose didn’t finish her sentence.

They heard some kind of rustling sound outside the cloudily translucent window…but nothing more than that.

The powered suit that had left the gas-proof door hadn’t returned.

“Around back of the crematorium would be…right out there, wouldn’t it?”

Because no else was talking, Fukiyose’s voice sounded awfully loud.

Then silence.

It was so uncomfortably quiet that Aogami Pierce’s gulp was audible.

“What is going on outside?”

The bulletproof plastic sprayed over the outside of the window left the view too cloudy to see well. Aogami Pierce slowly approached to try and get a view outside.

''Crash!!

A powered suit’s bucket-like head armor broke through the cloudy window.

“Eek!?”

Aogami Pierce tumbled backwards onto his rear.

No one laughed.

This wasn’t ordinary glass. Even after breaking, it didn’t shatter. The glass advertised as bulletproof stayed in one piece with cracks spiderwebbing across it. How much force had that slammed into the window with? After breaking through the plastic wall, the bucket-like head armor did not move. Aogami Pierce didn’t know exactly how a powered suit worked or was worn, but the head was at an unnatural height for standing or sitting. Wasn’t it painful to have just your head fixed in such an awkward position?

Or.

Was the wearer beyond the point of complaining about pain or fear?

Something was definitely happening.

What that was was less clear.

But while the details were a mystery, staying here would be a bad idea!!

“Th-there’s something out there… I saw ''some kinda giant legs moving around''! If we don’t do anything, will that thing get in through the window!?”

Fukiyose also took a few steps toward the window.

“I-it’s fine,” she said. “It’s fine. I mean, those Bio Secure(?) people sealed up all the exits with that special bulletproof plastic!”

A high-pitched and unpleasant cracking sound rang out.

Yes. Tons of cracks had spiderwebbed through one of those precious windows, destroying it.

What protection was that?

“Are you planning to hide in here forever?” asked Aogami Pierce. “What about food and water? All we’ve got is the bread vending machine in the hallway!”

The bread vending machine was already half covered in “sold out” lights and those special forces(?) protected head-to-toe with tough powered suits hadn’t fared too well themselves. No one could say for certain if the makeshift bulletproof nature of the plastic applied over glass could really prevent this attacker from getting in.

More than that, the trapped high schoolers could succumb to the mental pressure, panic, and suicidally scatter.

Tsukuyomi Komoe, who was responsible for all those students, breathed out through her nose. The 135cm teacher managed to speak even as she tearfully trembled.

“Th-th-th-there was a bus outside! We can take a look outside and, if there’s an opening, make a run for the bus out the main entrance!!”

“But who’s going to drive it!?”

“Believe it or not, I have a Class 2 large vehicle license, so I can handle a bus with ease!!”

The students were leaning heavily toward the “not” side, but complaining would only get them left behind in the crematorium filled with such a dangerous atmosphere. And no one in a 1st year high school class would know how to drive even an ordinary car. So like it or not, Tsukuyomi Komoe was their only hope.

They decided to call over the crematorium staff and the part-time monk too. They gathered their things and approached the gas-proof door that was inflated with air and felt like the goal at the end of a marathon. The problem was the space beyond the two-layer door.

Looking to the roundabout with a large roof to keep the rain off…there it was. The bus they had arrived on.

The 20-ish meters to it clutched at their hearts with fear.

But the group protected by thick powered suits had been taken out.

This had to be better than heading out and staying on foot.

However, there was still a fundamental question.

“So what was that about giant legs moving around?”

“I don’t know. That’s just what I saw through the distorted glass.”

They only saw darkness out front. That didn’t tell them much of anything.

But it had to be there.

“I-I found the key… Okay, everyone, are you ready? There is no turning back if you forget something. Ready, set…go!!”

On Komoe-sensei’s signal, they all ran out toward the bus.

===Part 2===

It was already night and a red snow was falling.

A girl in black mourning clothes, Misaka Mikoto, let her shoulders slump.

Truly the world had to be ending if Shokuhou Misaki was the only person she had to vent to.

“What do we do now!? It’s gotten dark. It’s eight o’clock! But we still haven’t found that idiot, it’s well past the dorm’s curfew, and we missed dinner…”

“I have Mental Out, so I can get by if need be.”

“Are there no hints at all!? We haven’t seen any of those Bio Secure powered suits in a while, so what is even happening anymore!?”

That was who they were supposed to be pursuing, but it felt like they were straying further and further from the center of the excitement. They were in District 10 since the crematorium was there, but was this even the right district to search?

And…

“What is that?”

Just as she was starved for any information at all, Misaka Mikoto spotted something in the distance.

Specifically, at a large intersection with a pedestrian bridge located a short distance away.

“There’s something there.”

“Those aren’t ground-based drones, are they?”

This was nothing at all like Bio Secure and their powered suits. The things didn’t even seem mechanical.

What were those gross 2m monsters crawling with legs?

Mikoto wasn’t a fan of snakes and worms either, but she found it hard to watch many-legged creatures moving around.

And these didn’t look like ordinary creatures. Something like big clumps of blonde hair were crawling this way and that. They inspired the same disgust as peeking inside a stranger’s kitchen trash bucket.

Mikoto held a hand over her mouth in exaggerated sorrow.

“Long blonde hair… Shokuhou, this isn’t some new and extremely cursed special move of yours, is it?”

“Of course it isn’t. How am I supposed to use my psychological Mental Out to make hair move around on its own? Besides, isn’t it obvious at a glance that those monstrous clumps of filth are nothing at all like the perfect beauty ability of my hair!?”

The busty blonde must have been deeply offended because she tearfully grabbed at Mikoto.

Mikoto had a fairly strong belief that half the negative aspects of the world were Shokuhou Misaki’s fault, but apparently these things were part of the other half.

“So what are they?” asked Mikoto.

“I sincerely hope the fact that the dead are getting back up doesn’t mean we’ve entered some alternate world where anything goes…”

Several of the golden things turned their way. Forcefully.

It wasn’t clear why, but the things had locked onto them.

However, if they were vulnerable to physical attacks, they weren’t really anything to fear. Not when Misaka Mikoto was Academy City’s #3 Railgun.

She blasted an arcade coin at three times the speed of sound and the golden crabs, centipedes, and whatnot scattered. Of course, she could only manage this so easily because she was the Level 5 known as the Ace of Tokiwadai and an ordinary person wouldn’t stand a chance against them.

“Misaka-san, there’s one up on the pedestrian bridge.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Misaka-san, you missed one in the right side street.”

“I was just getting to that one.”

“Misaka-san, wait, that isn’t one of them!!”

“Nhh!?”

Misaka Mikoto shook hard.

…Did she just blast a non-blonde thing as it turned a corner up ahead? And the thing making a clanging sound was, um, a vehicle?

This was one problem with being too powerful.

Time froze for a bit.

And Shokuhou Misaki held a hand over her mouth in exaggerated sorrow.

“Misaka-san… To think you would tarnish your name ability with murder at your age…”

“Wait, hold on, they’re probably not dead maybe! Oh please be alive, whoever you are!!”

She rushed over to find no one in the driver’s seat.

In fact, the engine wasn’t even on. Apparently no one had been inside and something had caused the parked car to slowly slide forward. While this frozen street looked flat, if you placed pachinko balls on it, she guessed they would probably all roll in a single direction.

But anyway…

“Phew. No harm, no foul.”

“I have a feeling this still violates several law abilities, but it’s only a feeling, so I’ll ignore it.”

Just as the two of them were breathing a sigh of relief, Mikoto spotted a girl passed out near the car.

The girl wore a white nun’s habit.

And was that a calico cat and a girl figurine she had there?

===Part 3===

Heavy yet unsteady breathing sounded in the dark night of red snow.

“Pant, gasp…”

Coming from Kihara Goukei.

The end of her extended arm was grasping a giant fly head.

Her left arm was missing past the elbow and the right arm holding the corpse was already rotting away in places, revealing the greenish discoloration of the bone below.

Had her opponent called this magic? Some method that Kihara had never before seen had eliminated so many of her biological reactions that even the brains contained within her skull had been fully blown away at least twice, but, well, ''all she had to do was mend the missing biological organs.

(Still, I did lose a lot: three of the stamp-sized computer chips embedded in my body, two of my bacteria colonies, and even my precious pea crabs…)

But she had still defeated that thing.

When she tossed the unneeded fly head aside, it splatted onto the red snow-covered ground and then vanished as if melting into thin air. Like it had never existed in the first place.

Necromancer Isabella Theism was seated with her back against a building wall.

Her head was hanging limply and she wasn’t moving.

A thin layer of red snow had accumulated on her head.

She had to already be unconscious.

However, this wasn’t over yet.

Kihara Goukei heard unpleasant rustling sounds.

Coming from a golden mass resembling a giant crab.

Apparently these things had been scattered around by a visitor who went by the overblown title of “great demon”.

The small boy approached her. Probably because he was afraid.

His name was Urekawa Ousuke, wasn’t it?

She loved children. No, it didn’t have to be children. Asking for help was a gamble because it required revealing your weakness and powerlessness to someone else. To the point that a rejection from them could mean losing everything. Kihara Goukei loved anyone who would take that step to rely on her. Which was why she wanted to live up to that trust no matter what. Even though she knew, as one of the infamous Kiharas, they would all wind up disliking her in the end.

“Madame Gou…”

“Don’t worry. There is nothing to fear.”

By the time she said that, all wounds had vanished from Kihara Goukei. Only smooth skin was visible through her torn clothing. Her rotten and missing limbs were back as well.

A child was watching. Doing the correct thing always made them fear her, but that didn’t mean she should continue showing off all that gruesome blood and injuries.

…However, that didn’t mean she had regained full function of her body.

(Really, I would have been truly dead if that thing had destroyed two more of my miniaturized myocardium bunches.)

She wasn’t about to say so, though.

She was concerned, but increasing the boy’s burden by revealing the state of her remaining lives was the wrong thing to do.

As reliable Madame Gou, the correct choice was to smile and say something else.

“Let’s get you home. I will crush all the dangers and clear a path for you☆”

She was perfectly fine with leaving Isabella to die, but the boy looked up at her with damp eyes and she was forced to give herself two extra arms. …This was not a free-to-use unlimited storage space deal, though. If she didn’t orally ingest various ''ingredients'' such as protein and calcium, she would suffer from deficiency symptoms, so she had to be careful. Apparently her only choice was to fight today while carrying yesterday’s enemy on her back.

(But still.)

“This was too much of détour. I really don’t think I have enough stamina left to deal with that Coronzon person.”

===Part 4===

They had settled on a plan.

First, take a transport plane into the sky. Then every last missile left in Academy City would be fired on Coronzon and they would hide in that barrage to parachute down nearby.

Only so many people could act.

Namely, the group in the crumbling consulate.

Kamijou Touma, Alice Anotherbible, Kihara Noukan, the Bologna Succubus, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, Qliphah Puzzle 545, Dion Fortune, Takitsubo Rikou, and Hamazura Shiage.

Their job was to battle a great demon to keep the entire world at peace.

It was ironic that the group they had gathered for such an over-the-top objective had such variety yet wasn’t even large enough to play a soccer match.

(So Vidhatri is ultimately staying in the consulate to rest. At least it sounds like she’s woken up.)

They would just have to do this with the group available.

At 9 PM, they stepped out from the former Bridge Builders Cabal consulate.

Their destination was District 23. It was right next door to District 12 where they were now.

They could travel that distance on foot.

Kamijou took a nervous look out at the main street and was shocked by how dark it was.

Was this really Academy City?

“There’s no one here. No cars either. I know the Anglicans apparently took over the city, but I guess they’re not patrolling the streets like Anti-Skill.”

“Because their priority is Coronzon. That selfish and indiscreet group did not travel halfway around the world to keep order in the city,” said Dion Fortune, pouting her lips.

Even if it was only an interim position, she seemed upset that none of them were listening to what she said as their leader. Understandable.

“If they’re not willing to do the job, they shouldn’t have used military might to take over…” said Accelerator over the wireless earphone Kamijou wore.

That other leader was also in a bad mood. Again, understandable.

District 23 was a unique place that specialized in the aerospace industry and the entire district was a giant off limits zone, but not much security was functioning with the city in such a bad state. And it seemed unlikely the Anglicans would understand the scientific value well enough to post magician guards.

The place was wide open at the moment.

Academy City was darker than usual and Kamijou asked a question while walking through the falling red snow.

“District 7 is a big place. Do we know Coronzon’s location there?”

“The former site of the Windowless Building,” said Accelerator.

“…I see.”

“Apparently that damn demon intends destroy every piece of Aleister’s legacy.”

Coronzon was currently spreading “blonde hair monsters” around District 7 for defense. They looked frightening at first, but finding the highest concentration would tell you what Coronzon most wanted to protect, which told them where Coronzon was as she completed her ceremony. …Constructing a defensive line was important, but this could easily happen if you weren’t careful where you positioned it.

In this snow, Kamijou found it frightening to be endlessly on the lookout without anything actually happening.

He felt like he would freeze to death if he didn’t do something himself.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet opened and closed her iron maiden thing.

“If you want to warm up, my coat is open to you.”

“Help me, her nemesis!!”

Kamijou clasped his hands and prayed to the flying succubus who launched a flying kick into Miss Bouquet’s face since it was the only exposed part of her. She did it with those sharp heels of hers, so would she be okay?

Meanwhile, the border to District 23 came into view. It was impossible to miss with the metal fence taller than an adult stretching endlessly to the left and right.

“So this is the place.”

From the outside, no guards were in evidence.

That special district was supposedly crammed full of runways and launch sites, but it was terribly dark at the moment. The stadium-like lighting was currently switched off. Probably because the international airport was shut down during the emergency.

“Still, there might be someone in the roofed checkpoints,” cautioned Accelerator. “So instead of causing unnecessary problems, find a good spot and climb over the fence.”

“You’re so nice to normal people.”

“Of course I am. Normal people aren’t a nuisance to society like all of you.”

Kamijou had no response to that one.

They all climbed over the tall fence. It looked like little Alice would have trouble…and she might just spread her arms and break through the fence with a smile if left to her own devices, so Kamijou assisted her.

Meanwhile, Hamazura noticed something and grew flustered.

“H-hey. That bouquet person is flailing around on the ground. She fell over!”

“Peh peh peh. It’s a miracle she even managed to climb to the top of the fence in that iron maiden of a coat!” said the Bologna Succubus.

“This world is deeply sick if we must rely on these people to save us all,” lamented Accelerator.

The Bologna Succubus held a hand to her mouth and roared with laughter while showing zero inclination to help (even though that was her colleague), so Hamazura and Takitsubo had to help up the girl who might as well have been wearing a mascot costume made of steel. With all the metal on the outside, she had to be handled with care lest their palms stick to it in the cold.

And the mystery person inside was crying fairly seriously.

“Uh, uh, eh, uhhh… That insane demon who wanders around in her underwear was making fun of me. I’ll never live it down…”

Apparently the Bologna Succubus’s fashion choices were considered abnormal even among the Transcendents. On the other hand, the girl talking here wore a naked apron underneath her thick coat.

“You should have remove the heavy coat and thrown it over the fence,” commented Kihara Noukan who had made it to the other side of the fence.

How had a dog managed that? Was he really just a golden retriever?

They had finally entered the off-limits zone.

But they would be safe for now. This plan came straight from Accelerator at the very top. Kamijou knew he didn’t need to be nervous, but he still found himself crouching down to avoid being seen.

“Your destination is Runway D-25. A transport plane is waiting for you there. I had the snow cleared in this frigid weather to get it there, so don’t you waste it.”

“I’m amazed to learn the city has at least 25 runways.”

But even with the runway lights off, wouldn’t an airplane and its large wings be pretty noticeable out in the red snow? An airplane’s main wings seemed more delicate than a house’s roof, though.

The Bologna Succubus flapped her wings.

“If it’s just the boy, I could carry him up into the night sky. No airplane necessary.”

“I wouldn’t if I were you. Coronzon and the Anglicans will both react sharply to any magical tricks. An airplane lets us fly without using any magic, which will help us hide within the missile explosions to approach.”

Dion Fortune immediately shot down her idea.

In the magic world, you apparently weren’t guaranteed a victory if your magic power level was over a million billion or whatever. At times, it was more useful to fully hide your presence and blend into the background.

Qliphah Puzzle 545 had been flapping her own wings for the same reason, so she froze a bit as everyone turned her way.

The red snow was beginning to accumulate in the darkness. The marks on the runway were hard to make out, but that just meant they had to find the place where a lot of people had been moving around clearing the snow. By following the remaining footprints and tire tracks, it looked like they could at least avoid getting lost and walking in circles through the vast District 23.

“Hey, there’s something there.” Kihara Noukan was looking elsewhere. “It doesn’t look like a city security robot. That is a design that would frighten the children to tears.”

A weird, two meter crab creature was scurrying along in the distance.

No, was that even a living thing?

The monster was made from tons of blonde hair.

This was one of the patrolling guards Coronzon was using for defense.

“A scout, I suppose,” said Blodeuwedd the Bouquet with a white breath.

Kamijou frowned.

“Is it something like the Aethyr Avatars I saw in the UK?”

“She isn’t providing them that much power. Probably so she can focus on Adikalika,” assessed Dion Fortune.

But it was still there.

Hadn’t that #1 bastard said they were only in District 7!? Then what’s this one doing here!?

“Coronzon must have noticed me poking around, so she randomized her defensive line to confuse us as we tried to slip through!” said Accelerator.

“What, so it was your fault!?”

“No, it was your fault for failing to settle on a plan without my help!!”

But while he didn’t say it out loud, Kamijou was moderately surprised.

Apparently not even new Board Chairman Accelerator could see anything and everything happening in Academy City.

Was his observable area being limited by all the unrepaired damage across the city?

This meant Coronzon could more easily learn of their plan…but that didn’t ruin everything. She would have learned about it eventually. Even if she knew they were coming, they would still be able to parachute in among the missiles while she was too busy dealing those missiles to deal with them.

“But if the transport plane or the runway are blown up, you won’t be able to take off. Get aboard the plane as soon as you can. We can discuss this after that!”

Kamijou heard the rumbling of an engine.

Based on what Accelerator had said, he was expecting to find airport staff operating a snow plow, but that wasn’t what this was.

“What the hell is that?” asked Accelerator.

“…That’s my class.”

It was a bus.

With a 135cm teacher gripping the steering wheel.

[[File:GT Index v13 BW5.png|thumb]]

Either she wasn’t used to driving such a large vehicle or the tires were slipping on the red snow, because it wasn’t moving any faster than a bicycle. He heard a flapping sound and noticed a window toward the back was open just a bit with a curtain caught in it.

Why had they wandered into off limits District 23?

As he wondered that, he recalled the crematorium was in District 10 and that was adjacent to District 23. With Coronzon and her defenders swarming their home ground of District 7, maybe they hadn’t been able to return to their dorms and had come here for shelter.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet gave a simple comment.

“They’re going to die.”

A shape was already in hot pursuit.

Several were in fact.

Those two meter crabs were made by forcibly wrapping long, long blonde hair. Unlike the weirdly long legs of a Japanese spider crab, these were stouter and had thick, brutally shaped pincers. At that size, a pinch would probably be able to crush and slice right through a steel pipe as big around as Kamijou’s arm, but what was with that clump of hair? In addition to simple physical attacks, its terrifying appearance suggested it could also use toxins and infections.

They couldn’t let Coronzon know what they were doing.

He knew that much.

But then he saw one of the monsters, which could run straight forward despite being a crab, lunge toward the bus that couldn’t get its speed up thanks to the slippery snow. No, the long tail on that one meant it was probably a scorpion. What would happen to his classmates if it caught up?

“…”

Kamijou Touma made a rapid direction change.

He clenched his right fist and charged straight toward the giant killer scorpion.

The instant he punched it, the sensation vanished.

It rapidly lost its shape and scattered across the red snowy ground.

It gave off a twisted shine.

That really was long, long blonde hair it was made of. At this point, there was no need to ask whose.

The #1 groaned from the earphone.

He may have been holding his head where he was.

“You’re just causing us more trouble…”

“Where can I send my class!?”

“The closest option would be the international airport terminal. It’s full of anti-terror mechanisms, so it should last a while. I’ll open the shutter at the delivery entrance.”

Fortunately, smart people could switch gears quick at times like this.

His voice might not reach them inside the bus, but he should still be able to use the school’s social media. Just to be safe, he sent a notification to all their phones, so the entire class received a message from a dead boy’s address simply telling them to change course.

“Now I just have to draw the attention of the golden crabs and snakes so the bus can escape safely!”

''Boom!!!

Something exploded nearby.

No, that was the sound of thick lightning dropping from high in the sky and piercing a giant snake.

“There’s only so much I can do,” said Accelerator. “You figure out which targets are most efficient.”

Kamijou couldn’t afford to die here. Even if he let his class escape, the entire world would be doomed if Coronzon were allowed to launch Adikalika. And then his classmates would be killed regardless.

The Bologna Succubus raised her voice from a short distance away.

“Stop worrying about the future! Focus on what’s right in front of you!!”

The golden scorpion was closer than he had expected.

While he was watching its sharp pincers, something else swooshed sharply down from the upper right of his vision.

That was the giant venomous tail.

“Uh!?”

He heard a powerful metallic roar and saw orange sparks.

For a brief moment, Kamijou truly had no idea what had happened.

He sensed the sweet, sweet scent of nectar and felt someone else’s body heat in what was supposed to be a freezing night.

He wasn’t in complete darkness. He was shut off from the world, but the enclose space was filled with a faint bluish-white light meant for growing plants. And he saw an excessively skinny girl’s body.

That was apparently Blodeuwedd the Bouquet. Her thick metal coat had covered him and deflected the sharply jabbing scorpion tail with its massive armor.

“Th-thank-”

“You’re mine now☆”

“Mgh, mgh, mgahhh!?”

Before the fear could even set in, he was caught in the embrace of a pair of unusually skinny arms. And the thick metal coat that cut him off from the outside world shut the final remaining slit before his eyes. Uh, oh. At this rate, he would be chewed up inside this super-sweet girl’s iron maiden!?

An exasperated voice spoke from outside the coat.

“You know, I’m beginning to think you want the boy’s right hand to strip you naked and toss you out into the open.”

“Hm, is that how it works?”

With a flapping sound, the Bologna Succubus opened her large wings wide.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet also opened her thick coat like double doors.

Those Transcendents had once tried to bring salvation to the people.

…They really were so much alike. Kamijou couldn’t imagine why they didn’t get along.

And now wasn’t the time to be relaxing. Failing to take out any of those monsters would only lead to further victims.

Once Kamijou was finally returned to the outside world, the demon woman smiled and whispered to him.

“Really, boy. You never do stop trying to show off, do you?”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“I didn’t say that☆” “She didn’t say that☆”

===Part 5===

As the bus departed, Aogami Pierce stared out the window and shouted.

“Kami-yan!!”

But Kamijou did not answer the call from the bus.

Maybe he hadn’t heard through the thick window.

Or maybe he was preoccupied with other matters. Aogami Pierce could see him using his right hand to punch and destroy a few more of the blonde hair crabs and scorpions approaching the bus.

Even though he didn’t have to do that.

Even though he been pushed away as a dangerous source of infection.

Even though Aogami Pierce hadn’t confronted the adults for treating him that way when they hadn’t even applied any real pressure to prevent it.

In truth, the class had no idea what was going on.

Why was Kamijou Touma’s fist so effective against those monsters?

What was he doing here in District 23 after fleeing the crematorium?

But he hadn’t changed.

Dead or resurrected, Kamijou Touma was Kamijou Touma.

The bus drove on.

To leave that boy behind again.

A Magical Powered Kanamin charm swayed from Aogami Pierce’s pocket. The location of a new shelter had been sent to his phone which finally had a signal again.

Fukiyose Seiri looked glum. The highly responsible girl was talking to herself.

“Oh, no. …And I called him a zombie back at the crematorium.”

“That settles it. Busty black-haired Fukiyose Seiri must atone by working as the manager of the boy’s dorm for a while!!”

Aogami Pierce struck a pose shortly before a fist struck his face.

She wasn’t opposed to finding some way to atone, but she disliked Aogami Pierce’s attempt to use that to benefit himself.

Something like a sob came from Tsukuyomi Komoe in the driver’s seat.

She let go of the big steering wheel with one hand to rub her eyes, but the large bus began to slide to the side and was soon swerving back and forth a lot. She was too short for her feet to reach the gas and brake pedals, but maybe it had been a mistake to break a mop handle in two and attach them to her legs with packing tape wrapped around her shins and shoes to forcibly allow her to drive.

Little by little, their usual classroom was returning.

Now the only thing they needed was him.

===Part 6===

District 23 was large and flat. It was dark, devoid of landmarks, and currently covered in an unnatural red snow. The frantic fighting threatened to throw off Kamijou’s sense of direction, leaving him unsure which way he had come from and which way he was going.

(The bus has gone, so now I’d really like to get away from these things.)

“Teacher, look after yourself!”

He didn’t need Alice to tell him that.

Golden crabs and snakes were converging on his location from multiple directions.

He’d taken it too far.

Now he might not make it.

Just as his panic was starting to show, something exploded to the side.

No, that wasn’t it. The steel mass of a snowplow had crashed in and crushed a few of the golden snakes and scorpions.

The driver was too small for the driver’s seat.

The person who hopped out of the snowplow was Anna Sprengel.

Come to think of it, hadn’t she been freeloading in Kamijou’s room since her punishment had been delayed?

“I hope you hadn’t forgotten about me, fool. No, surely not.”

Kamijou Touma’s lack of reaction earned him a kick in the shin.

Apparently his inability to look her in the eye had not been appreciated.

“I have been gathering information on my own and it isn’t looking good. Academy City’s resources are close to depletion, but Coronzon only has to cut off more of her endlessly growing hair to replenish her forces.”

“Eh? That’s how it works?”

“She is only allotting them the bare minimum of resources because she had to focus on Adikalika, but if she focused on mass-producing these things, it could turn into a very big problem.”

A short distance away, the red snow was split through and something like an Eastern dragon drew out a large curve.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was swinging around her metal coat’s large sleeves and shouting something, so she was probably summoning a swarm of starlings or other pest birds.

Kamijou asked Anna Sprengel a question as he ran along the red snow.

“How much do you know about our plan?”

“I wouldn’t be in District 23 if I wasn’t familiar with the general idea.”

He didn’t know how she had learned that, but if she could do it, then someone else could in the same way.

Like Coronzon.

Since they had clashed with her blonde hair monster scouts, she had to know what they were doing regardless.

But that didn’t make this revelation any less frightening.

“…”

Meanwhile, Hamazura Shiage had been silently glaring this way for a while.

The track suit girl with him also showed no sign of stopping.

Kamijou didn’t fully understand all of the relationships between the people here. Did Hamazura Shiage and Takitsubo Rikou have some connection to Anna Sprengel?

For that matter…

“After R&C Occultics, I bet there aren’t many people with a favorable opinion of Anna Sprengel.”

“You’re not wrong, but I’m being falsely accused in this case. That wasn’t me – it was the filthy scammer who was using my body.”

“?”

That made no sense to Kamijou, but why did Hamazura and Takitsubo also frown when they heard it?

A certain succubus reacted to the phrase “falsely accused” by wagging her tail side to side, but he didn’t have time for her right now.

After some more running, Kamijou came across a lump taller than he was. The pointy-haired boy initially jumped, thinking it was another monster released by Coronzon, but it wasn’t moving. Apparently it was only a large pile of red snow.

The result of clearing the snow.

Of course, this went beyond what someone armed with a shovel could accomplish. Most likely, someone had used that snowplow or a wheel loader.

There were a few different routes marked with tire tracks, so there must have been a team that gathered the runway’s snow here and another team that loaded that into a dump truck or something and carried it away for.

“With those monsters in District 23, I had the workers quit clearing the snow and go hide in the international airport terminal,” said Accelerator. “After all the work they put in for us, I couldn’t let them die for us too.”

That went without saying.

But with the world on the verge of destruction, Kamijou appreciated hearing things like that said out loud. He didn’t know if this should be called an emergency or a crisis, but neither was any reason to trample people’s lives underfoot. And the person serving at the top as board chairman was willing to say so.

And in that case…

“Is that it?” said Kamijou, catching his breath.

Even with barely any lights around, the large shape still stood out from the surrounding darkness.

It looked like a giant whale with wings equipped with several x-shaped propellers.

It was a transport plane.

===Part 7===

Misaka Mikoto sighed after managing to rescue(?) Index in the dark streets of District 10.

“I didn’t screw up. I mean, I’m helping her, so she should thank me. There is no reason for her to throw stones at me. None at all.”

“Hey, girl. You might be able to fool that sheltered nun, but you can’t pull the wool over the eyes of a god of deception.”

The 15cm person(?) was saying something, but she probably wasn’t human and could be safely ignored!

Academy City’s #3 looked into the distance.

There was something there.

But not a scurrying blonde thing. This looked more scientific.

Mikoto stared in amazement.

“Are self-driving vehicles allowed on public roads? I know they let those busses drive around during the Daihaseisai, but wasn’t that a special case?”

“It may be a public app-based taxi service taking advantage of loopholes in the regulations. Besides, aren’t even the traffic lights having trouble in this red snow? When ordinary taxis can’t ensure their safety, they’re probably refusing to work.”

Shokuhou gave some explanations, but it didn’t sound like she had anything solid to go on.

At any rate, Mikoto raised her hand to hail it and it approached her like normal.

“What’s with this car? It’s tiny.”

Probably because it was designed to be self-driving and thus had no driver’s seat or passenger seat. It reminded her of one of those ultra-small cars shaped like an egg lying on its side that you sometimes saw in TV ads. She wondered if a golf cart might actually be more spacious.

Index tilted her head.

“Will that take us to Touma?”

“I don’t feel like explaining, so I’ll just say ‘more or less’.”

“Okay!”

The white nun boarded with guileless eyes. A single piece of candy would probably be enough to kidnap her.

Meanwhile, a much more suspicious type of girl gave the car a skeptical look.

“Not so fast, Misaka-san. Hailing it is all well and good, but do you know where it’s going?”

“Scoot over.”

Mourning clothes Misaka Mikoto ignored the question and climbed in after the nun.

The door automatically shut behind her.

“Huh!?”

Shokuhou Misaki pounded on the door from the outside.

But this self-driving car only seated two!

“Didn’t you hear me say the car was tiny, you stupid girl!? And claiming seats has always been a race! Hmm, what a shame. There’s just not enough room in here for any sacks of fat to join us.”

“–––––!? ……!!!?”

“Hm? Short hair, what is she saying?”

“That right there is her shouting ‘Huhhh? Huhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh??’ at the top of her lungs. She’s so cute when she’s helpless.”

Misaka Mikoto was cruel through and through.

With a deep rumble, the tiny car mercilessly drove off.

It was clearly electric, so that rumble was probably a sound effect played for safety.

(Since it’s self-driving, if she really wanted to stop it, she only needed to move in front of it while it was stopped so the camera or radar would detect her and automatically apply the brakes. That stupid girl’s inability to ad lib makes her so much easier to deal with.)

15cm Othinus stared into the distance and muttered from Index’s shoulder.

“I may be a god of war, but if that outwitted her, I’m worried she won’t survive left all alone with those weird golden things scurrying around.”

“If that was enough to kill her, she wouldn’t have been a thorn in my side for so long.”

===Part 8===

Aboard the transport plane, Kamijou had been most afraid while they rattled along the frozen runway, but everything stabled out once they were up in the night sky. Even though now was when they were truly approaching death.

He was surprised enough to find they had parachutes small enough for Alice and Anna Sprengel, but then he noticed Kihara Noukan rummaging around a corner of the cargo space. Even though he was a golden retriever. Was there really such a thing as a canine parachute in this wide world?

“It’s an extreme sports product. Manufactured by a start-up with some mistaken ideas about what a pet product should be. They also made dog snowboards and dog diving suits. Even though the animals can’t understand or enjoy the concept of being in a viral video. In the end, it’s a product made by humans for humans.”

The voice coming through the earphone was as prickly as ever.

…Just how much information reached the new board chairman on any given day? This didn’t sound at all relevant to the current global threat.

Kamijou also noticed Blodeuwedd the Bouquet modifying the harness of the parachute she was issued. Equipping it to her thick metal coat probably was a challenge, but was it safe to mess with it on your own?

“The missile attack has started,” said Accelerator.

“I see.”

“The stockpile’s only so big, so you only get one chance at this. Jump out into the sky at the designated point and drop down near Coronzon. Miss this chance and you don’t get another shot at it.”

“I’m aware.”

After that exchange, the #1 fell silent.

He seemed displeased with something.

Accelerator whispered the next words over the transmission.

“…Complain about having to do this.”

“Later. I’ll complain all you want when we’re looking back on it.”

A red warning light lit up and the wind raged in.

The pressure rapidly changed.

In the very back of the transport plane, the door meant for loading and unloading vehicles lowered. It formed a gentle slope and led toward a heart-stopping view of the city far below.

“Time to go.”

“The #1 has to see everyone else go?” said Accelerator. “There really is something wrong with this world.”

It was finally time.

Great Demon Coronzon had probably noticed by now. So they couldn’t hope for the best-case scenario. Their next best bet was to put her in a situation where she couldn’t stop them even if she knew what they were doing.

That meant launching every last missile left in Academy City. Mixed in with all those flying objects, Kamijou’s group would be dropping down toward Coronzon.

“Your drop destination is the former site of the Windowless Building in the center of District 7. Not long now!”

An adult man stood next to the open slope and shouted over the roaring wind. It wasn’t clear if he was from the city’s light side or dark side.

“You will be dropping along with the missile attack! So there is no making a U-turn to try again if you mess up. It would stand out too much. We will be arriving above the drop point shortly. Make sure you jump the first time! It is currently 10 PM sharp. Begin jump!!”

At this point, Kamijou just had to steer himself.

He clenched his teeth and took a running start down the slope leading into the sky at over 2000m up.

He forcefully kicked off the end of the slope.

Gravity vanished.

He jumped.

Did he not feel the ordinary fear of heights in that moment because it was such a dark night? The city night was lit unusually sparsely, making it hard to judge the distance to the ground. …Which was actually a dangerous factor leading to landing accidents when making parachute jumps.

Alice and Takitsubo Rikou zoomed right past him.

Apparently your positioning changed your speed.

Kamijou had been spared tumbling uncontrollably end over end, but not because of any athleticism on his part. The parachute bag on his back was wriggling on its own to adjust his air resistance and balance.

Even so, he was at an altitude of 2000m.

That wasn’t very far. In fact, it was frighteningly short for a fall.

As the wind roared up at him, he checked the small LCD on the shoulder strap to find his free fall speed was more than 200km/h. A mere 2 kilometers was nothing.

(I hope that bastard watching on from his ivory tower of a prison did the math right!!)

Something like a cylinder with collapsible wings dropped by right next to Kamijou. It was about as thick around as a two liter water bottle, but its length was well over his height.

“Wait, a missile!?”

If it detonated now, he was dead.

He was free falling from higher up than a skyscraper roof, but this new development eliminated the ordinary fear of that situation.

Also, this didn’t look like a missile that flew in a straight line before piercing into the target.

“What is that? It’s more like a little fish swimming through the sky. A whole school of them!”

“It’s nothing special,” said Accelerator. “Just a ''turretless'' next-gen tank. If you want to blow up another tank, a self-destructing drone has much better range and precision than an ordinary tank gun. Then all you need is to build a large-scale production line to bring down the cost of each drone stuffed full of semiconductors. Then to load a single tank with as many drones as possible, you replace the top of the tank with as many multiple launchers as will fit.”

The explosive covered in what looked like small smartphone lenses weaved sharply about.

This was more than simple speed.

This bleeding-edge deadly technology would read the trajectories of autocannon fire and auto grenade launchers that used radar fuses and then evade them as it approached its target. Once this swarm of slaughter locked onto you, there was no escape and it seemed to work just fine against magic.

“There really is something wrong with Academy City,” said Kamijou.

“Hey. By claiming and sitting on the military patent for this, we can keep the outside world from making any.”

Apparently the new board chairman had thought this through.

Kamijou just hoped it didn’t backfire.

At any rate, it sounded like he didn’t need to worry about any of the missiles pouring down from the sky accidentally hitting anyone. They could stay put and the ''swimming drones'' would avoid them on their own. In fact, it might be safer if no one panicked and tried moving around. …That did bother Kamijou a little because it reminded him of how people had to go through annoying processes and complete tedious registrations to make the processing easier for the machines.

He soared through the night sky.

He plunged into the valley between buildings.

The city that had looked so tiny rapidly spread out around him.

The LCD on his shoulder strap must have been linked to an altimeter. His parachute opened on its own without him having to pull anything. With a sound like a sheet beating at the air, he felt a squeezing across his body. The complex harness had distributed the weight.

“Gweh!!”

But that didn’t make it gentle. This didn’t feel beautiful it all.

Light as a feather this was not. The point of a parachute was to let you fall from a great height without dying and that was it. Maybe it was similar to how being shot through a bulletproof vest still hurt like hell and immobilized you for a bit.

It wasn’t over with the parachute opening.

In fact, he felt like he was still moving pretty quick with it open. The speed felt similar to attempting a slope while seated on a bicycle.

There was no light.

The swimming drones were detonated here and there in the sky and illuminating the world like camera flashes, but the contrast of the shadows was too strong and it only disoriented him.

The pointy-haired boy was aiming for a wide-open street with three lanes both ways…but it turned out to have a lot more stuff than he had expected: streetlights, trees, a wind turbine. Each one would kill him instantly if he collided with it. And the surrounding buildings created some highly irregular wind currents. In fact, the way the wind was dragging him backwards was terrifying.

“Damn, I wish I’d gone for a building rooftop!!”

“Do you want to die impaled on a street wireless LAN antenna or lightning rod?”

He heard a voice.

Was that Dion Fortune drifting along right next to him?

“More importantly, keep an eye on your altimeter. We’re almost at the ground. Don’t miss the moment of impact because it’s dark and there’s snow. You’re out of the fight here if you break your leg!!”

What exactly was he supposed to do?

Just as he wondered that, all the streetlights at a large intersection unnaturally lit up.

Had the rumored new board chairman done something again?

That showed Kamijou the distance to the ground…but it was way closer than he’d thought!?

“Oh, shit!!”

He bent his legs in preparation to cushion against the shock. The wind carried him over and he crashed int some low bushes between the street and sidewalk, but he supposed that was better than colliding with a thick and solid tree or streetlight.

As soon as he landed, the unnaturally lit up street lights unnaturally extinguished themselves.

(Hey, not so fast!)

He had to feel around in the darkness. He fumbled around until he managed to release the parachute harness from his body.

“Where’s the Windowless Building!?”

“The wind blew us pretty far off course. I caught a glimpse of it earlier, but from this far, Hamazura and Takitsubo might contact Coronzon before us.”

Not good.

They weren’t sure they could defeat that great demon with all of them fighting together. It was too dangerous for anyone to go ahead of the rest. Especially for the non magic experts.

Kamijou heard some large wings flapping overhead.

The Bologna Succubus was flying around while carrying iron-maiden-like Blodeuwedd the Bouquet. She was drawing out a big figure 8, so it didn’t look like she was taking the shortest route somewhere. Perhaps she was trying to draw Coronzon’s attention. They had mentioned magic side people reacting more sensitively to magical tricks.

But where was Alice Anotherbible?

Where had Anna Sprengel gone?

Or Qliphah Puzzle 545?

And Kihara Noukan?

(Damn, we keep losing the people that act like trump cards!)

Regardless, they were short on time. They were right at Coronzon’s throat, but that meant she would use each minute and second they delayed to plot a recovery. He wouldn’t even have time to check if everyone was alright.

Dion Fortune was not shaken.

In fact…

“We’ll just have to make do with the people we have. No matter how carefully you plan it out on paper, battles always come down to what you can do with the cards reality gives you!”

“But getting too accustomed to ad libbing means a complete lack of control.”

“Since when were you the careful planning type?”

…

Looking back, every single one of his fights had been ad libbed from beginning to end!!

They had been separated for now, but they would all be heading to the same place from their different landing spots, so he could only trust they would meet up where Coronzon was.

He was a good distance away from the former location of the Windowless Building, but it was a straight shot down a major street. There was no time to lose. If he was worried about Hamazura and Takitsubo, he had to rush there as fast as possible.

While running, Fortune kept to Kamijou’s left-hand side.

She was keeping her distance from Imagine Breaker.

As much as she looked like a young girl, this part of her may come from her nature as a tarot deck and original grimoire.

But they ended up stopping before long.

Because something blocked their way.

Creatures like two meter crabs and snakes made of blonde hair.

…But that wasn’t all.

''Roar!!!

A sudden blast of wind blew through.

The red snow on the ground was thrown into the air and Kamijou felt like he had been struck by an ocean of blood. If Dion Fortune hadn’t immediately grabbed his left arm and tugged, the surprise attack probably would have bisected him. Right down the middle.

Something scraped along the ground. Leaving behind a strange, sharp, and sinister scar. Kamijou briefly saw it as the earth itself hemorrhaging blood. And when the red snow guided his gaze along the scar…he saw someone.

Wearing black mourning clothes.

With a palette knife in her right hand.

With feline symbols all over her.

And the thing she was riding like a steed was…could you even call that thing a cat? The enormous and lithe beast shadow was made of black paint and stood two or three meters tall.

“You’re…kidding,” groaned Kamijou.

Calling this a reunion would be inaccurate. This was likely a different individual from the woman he knew.

But come to think of it…

Before, in the UK, Great Demon Coronzon had taken measures to stop Kamijou, Aleister, and the rest. She had released several pawns based on members of the Golden cabal. The Dion Fortune here now was the only survivor.

That had included big names like Westcott and Mathers…but come to think of it, there was one Golden magician who Coronzon had never used.

Dion Fortune gave the answer.

She spoke the name of the trump card Coronzon had saved until the very, very end.

“''Moina Mathers''…”

The name sounded subtly different from the one Kamijou knew.

But it likely referred to the same person.

She was the wife who had supported Mathers, one of the Golden cabal’s three founders. She was an engineer who had used her artistic talent to design realistically producible versions of the many spiritual items thought up by the Golden cabal. She was the black cat witch.

She resembled Mina, but the Moina that Coronzon had created really was different. The eyes behind the veil were pitch black. Sticky shadows lurked within them and they were so dark it seemed like they would absorb everything.

And Kamijou was hit by the fear of the unknown.

Thinking back, Mina Mathers had always fought alongside him.

To put it another way, they had never fought each other until one or the other was unconscious.

(You’re kidding…)

Out of all the Golden magicians, the black cat witch was the one whose strength as an enemy he couldn’t judge…

(We ''must'' stop Coronzon and Adikalika. We don’t have time for this risky battle that we might not even be able to win!)

Kamijou gulped.

At the same time, the girl next to him stepped forward.

“I’ll do it.”

“Fortune?”

“Honestly, this is a great opportunity. I was already thinking it was high time I conquered my trauma related to ''her''. I mean, she surrounded my house with black cats that were just meow, meow, meow, meow all night long, keeping the entire neighborhood up. She used an astral technique to gouge into my fragile maiden’s back. And there’s plenty more she needs to pay me back forrrrrrrrrr!!”

She suddenly exploded.

There was a lot of personal resentment mixed in, but Dion Fortune didn’t seem willing to back down.

If Fortune and Moina were going to clash here, then Kamijou had to get moving. He couldn’t stick around and waste Fortune’s determination to give him some time even if it meant wearing down her own life.

“Thanks!!” he shouted.

He thought he saw a small smile when Fortune briefly turned to look at him.

She was always saying hers was an interim position and she was only filling the vacancy.

But…

“She’s doing a pretty good job as archbishop if you ask me.”

Kamijou simply ran.

First those blonde hair monsters and now Moina Mathers… Was that really all? How many trump cards did Coronzon have hidden away?

===Part 9===

At the Windowless Building – or really, its former site – a pillar of pale light rose from the center of the large square clearing.

At this point, she must not have felt the need to hide.

Great Demon Coronzon held a hand to her hip, looked up at it, and sighed.

That was the Adikalika large-scale attack spell.

For a great demon like her to spend hours on it, the spell clearly required a lot of care to set up. Of course, that may have been why she felt so attached to it now.

“Only about an hour to go.”

Even that comment under her breath was interrupted and cut off by a nearby explosion.

Was that Academy City’s missile attack?

None of the missiles could directly hit her. She didn’t even need to raise her palm for them to explode and scatter in midair.

“Fools.”

If they had so much weaponry leftover, they should have ignored her and indiscriminately bombed different parts of the city. They should have thoroughly destroyed the city themselves. That way they could have prevented doom for the world at the cost of a single city.

This time, anyway.

She wasn’t about to call it quits if she failed the first time. She was Great Demon Coronzon and she had never said anything about only having a single devastating trump card.

The center of the threat was not Adikalika.

It was Great Demon Coronzon herself.

Of course, Academy City wasn’t actually placing their own fate and the fate of the world in the hands of this long-distance attack.

She knew just how crafty and greedy humans were.

She moved her feet to draw out the lines of a rectangle in the accumulated red snow. Then she added a diamond and a few lines to divide it into sections where she drew in the necessary symbols.

This was a horoscope.

A glance at the ground was enough to read it.

It detected a few people headed this way.

Sensing was her specialty. She was, after all, the supernatural being who managed knowledge off limits to living humans. And that management primarily meant preventing the masses from reaching or acquiring that knowledge.

She had lost count of how many people she had devoured after they foolishly assumed that summoning and taming her was the ticket to endless knowledge. It was laughable that those people were referred to as talented or wise when they couldn’t even figure out it was a bad idea to contact something that essentially had a warning sign with the words “danger” written in large text.

(Some grimoires make me sound really important while describing a role not much different from this country’s Kokkuri-san. Well, at least it’s not as bad as getting confused with the necromancy where people ask a rotten zombie to reveal the future to them.)

“Still…”

Did they really think an explosive blast – that is, physical light and sound – could disturb her?

It was almost scary how ignorant they were of magic. Or maybe was their misplaced confidence in their knowledge that would hurt them in the end. She felt like she was watching bandits hiding in the dark woods and celebrating their victory while unaware that night-vision devices existed.

There was no reason to wait for them to arrive. She could blow them up from here. And all she would need to do was raise her palm in that direction.

So it was time to obey her rule of dispersion.

Who should she kill first?”

“Heh.”

It amused her to no end that her creation of Dion Fortune had taken over her old position as the Anglican Archbishop. Blowing Fortune away along with the Moina Mathers she had sent out would be simple enough…but that was a low priority. The Archetype Processor that could break apart and transform any magic was a greater threat than Fortune herself, but that still wasn’t enough to push her up out of the low priority category.

Fortune was a toy Coronzon had made after all.

The creation could rebel against its creator, but it could never win.

The Bologna Succubus and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet also weren’t top priority. Coronzon had directly destroyed Crowley, so the Transcendents were small time to her. After all, Alice Anotherbible was ''an accidental success'' by one of Aleister’s students and the other Transcendents were the deteriorated result of mass-producing inferior copies of Alice.

(I can do better.)

“The standard route would be to crush Imagine Breaker here. Isn’t that right, ''Aleister''?”

That was the best choice if she wanted to beat them down the most.

As a demon, it was the most correct option.

Coronzon grinned and, for some reason, rubbed a hand below her navel before holding that palm straight out ahead.

Kamijou Touma wasn’t yet close enough to be visible, but that was a mere trifle. It wouldn’t stop her from targeting and killing him.

If she was going to do this, she might as well show him some truly wonderful sparks.

She would end his life with the terrible toy that had taken Aleister Crowley’s family from him and even triggered the Battle of Blythe Road.

Kamijou Touma.

He didn’t know space itself was about to explode.

With no way to sense it, he couldn’t raise his right hand to defend against it.

And once it hit him, he was destined to die.

The inability to escape that destiny had been proven by the death and doom of Aleister’s family.

“Does it hurt?”

It was rude.

She knew that, but she couldn’t help but let the smile split wide across her face.

“It hurts, doesn’t it, Aleister? Yes, it hurts to be trapped in your own body and forced to watch an ending you do not want. I should know. I lived through it myself. The entire time you had me sealed away, it was endless torture as I watching those hellish scenes playing out! Now it’s your turn, magician!! It’s time you felt even a minuscule fraction of the agony I felt as my body was used against my will!!!”

This was only one step in that process.

With each new step, she would take another life. And she could circle the globe as she went. That was his reward for underestimating a great demon and, even temporarily, using her like that. Look back upon the bloody path you walked and despair, Aleister.

But then…

“…No.”

She heard a voice.

It was a girl’s voice that ever so slightly irritated Great Demon Coronzon as she single-handedly prepared the end of the world.

She had been just a bit faster.

First, a sound like a large sheet beating at the air.

That was the sound of flapping wings.

The girl flew directly in front of the great demon and descended.

And with her feet on the ground, Artificial Demon Qliphah Puzzle 545 raised her voice.

“I won’t let you. I will never let you do that!!”

===Part 10===

And…

“Qliphah Puzzle 545?”

At first, she had completely forgotten who that was.

Or so Great Demon Coronzon’s expression suggested.

The result was obvious even before they fought. Unlike humans, angels and demons were not physical beings. Which meant they could directly sense the Telesma energy from which they were formed. That was an overwhelming disadvantage for Qliphah Puzzle 545. Frankly, it was amazing she had made it this far without being killed by the scouts Coronzon created by cutting off her own hair.

“Now that you mention it…yes, I remember now. You’re that imitation demon I created. And a creation opposing its creator isn’t even worth a laugh. What can a puny disposable pawn hope to accomplish against me?”

“''Leviathan''.”

She said one word.

Just one little word.

Yet as soon as Qliphah Puzzle 545 recited that incantation, Great Demon Coronzon fell silent.

“See? This will work against you.”

“Damn…you. That…”

[[File:GT Index v13 BW6.png|thumb]]

“Is fatal for you.”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 was also a demon.

So when she smiled, it split wide across her face.

“Great Demon Coronzon. You are the one who lurks in the Abyss hidden within the great Sephiroth tree and monopolizes the wisdom found there. You are the only wicked being who, as a demon, has managed to remain hidden in the holy realm guarded by angels. And in the end, you are no more than Crowley magic applied to the illicit technique to secretly devour and acquire the tree’s fruit and sap despite being its guardian.”

“Don’t you get that this power is too great for you? If an artificial imitation like you reaches to that place, all you will accomplish is destroying yourself.”

“A demon who is tangled around the very Sephiroth which makes you special, devours it, infects it, and consumes its functions would be your greatest enemy. …And there is one, isn’t there? A demon who appeared from the Qliphoth, the inverted tree which gathers all the world’s injustice and vice, broke the seal when Adam and Eve were driven out, and finally managed to bite at the Sephiroth! A demon so powerful he was reduced to an imperfect form in the current world!!”

Space exploded.

Orange sparks became visible.

Did the clashing of the two demons’ wills contain enough power to distort the phase?

“I create an atmosphere of war, disturb the regulated order, and inspire conflict between people. I may be an imitation, artificial, and false, but on a more basic level…I am still the kind of demon who devours the tree that is this world.”

“…”

Coronzon glanced down at her fingertips.

She wasn’t even scratched.

There was no problem.

…And yet she was trembling?

“How strange. Your structure obviously isn’t human, but it isn’t that of a normal demon either?”

“Just take a look at my name: Qliphah Puzzle 545. I too am a demon who lurks in the colossal tree. Although for me it’s the inverted tree that gathers all the unclean symbols. So I already contain the same traits and value as the serpent of the multiplying heads. I have it all!”

“Hidden in one of the great trees that acts as a diagram of the world, a supernatural being, a usurper of knowledge, and a demon… Why? Why are you so much like me!?”

“''I dunno, maybe cause you created me''?”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 attempted a wicked smile, but she was pretty sure she failed.

This wasn’t about challenging or surpassing.

This was a child killing her parent.

That was the lowest and wickedest sin, but perhaps that was what made it so appropriate for a demon.

So she spoke.

“Picture it. Summon within yourself the Beast of Revelation, the monster gnawing on the great tree. Beast and serpent and dragon and demon are one and the same, thus there is no boundary between you and he.”

With each word spoken, the girl-shaped demon could feel it.

Something was straining inside her and pulsing in a disturbing way.

Coronzon spread her wings wide and tangled together countless long blonde hairs like a spiderweb to form a complex magic circle…and then stopped. She had been in such a hurry that the spell she formed ''was too powerful.'' This would cause Adikalika to burst and return to nothing.

(Damn, I wasted 1.5 seconds on this!!)

So while holding herself back with wings spread, Coronzon whispered to her opponent.

And just like a demon, this whisper was meant to guide her in the wrong direction.

“You must be aware your very being is ''unraveling''.”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 had been created by Coronzon in order to cover the United Kingdom in a war atmosphere to drive it toward ruin. Since she had been meant as a temporary thing, not much care had gone into the structure of her girl form.

“You might be able to activate the spell, but you can never endure the recoil. Your form will break down permanently. And it will go beyond your appearance. You will lose your memories, your personality – everything. And you’re still going to go through with it!?”

By focusing on the primary functions, it would at least blow her away without a trace.

All that would remain would be, well, a twisted form worthy of the demon title. More than just her outer appearance, she would lose everything down to the depths of her mind and become nothing more than a hideous monster.

“7, 10, 8, 11, and 666. Extract the necessary numbers from within yourself while expanding them to their greatest form.”

But she didn’t care.

She wasn’t listening.

That foolish, weak, and filthy demon was intent on expanding the partial knowledge she had after incompletely performing an incomplete copy.

Because of what she had seen.

Inside that prison cell, that boy was working all alone to atone for his crimes and had still managed to find hope in the world outside, but she had seen his face when he found that world was being destroyed. She had seen his expression, which he probably hadn’t meant for anyone to see, when he had learned the boy he considered a comrade in arms was dead.

That’s why she needed to do this.

The people who were running here were a necessary part of the scenery he wanted to protect.

She wouldn’t let it end here. She wouldn’t let them be slaughtered from afar.

…No matter what she had to do.

“Here, I reflect the same number with a different meaning. By letting it engulf me, I gain a different self.”

She would protect the world – the dream – that boy was trying to create.

So Artificial Demon Qliphah Puzzle 545 roared with all her might.

Shaking free of the chill she felt as she unraveled.

(Farewell, master.)

“Transform me in body and soul, ''Leviathan''!!!”

===Part 11===

Shortly before that…

“Hamazura.

“I…know!!! What the hell!? Don’t despair in the world before you’ve even tried!”

They were lying on top of her.

Two figures had jumped in from behind and tackled Qliphah Puzzle 545 to the ground. Even if it was temporary, she had a body and that meant obstructing her breathing and actions would cancel the spell.

It happened at the very last second and from her own side.

Great Demon Coronzon recognized the pair too.

Hamazura Shiage and Takitsubo Rikou.

Two who, for some reason, hadn’t been on Coronzon’s list of targets had now arrived.

Pinned down on the red snow, Qliphah Puzzle 545 spoke weakly.

“Why…would you stop me?”

Her voice shook as she asked. Her face was a mess of tears and snot.

Understandably.

She would have lost that face and body.

Her personality and memories would have crumbled away.

She would have turned herself into a monster to battle Coronzon.

Of course that would scare an ordinary girl.

“You idiot!! If you don’t want him to suffer through watching a familiar face die while he’s forced to watch helplessly on from that cell of his, then why would you kill yourself and force it onto him that way!? To be honest, I don’t have a great opinion of the previous board chairman even after everything everyone’s said about him. But this new one’s different, right? He might actually do something to fix this city. But what you’re doing is just gonna send the next board chairman off the rails too!!”

“You saw him from closer than anyone.”

Takitsubo Rikou continued in her flat voice.

But that didn’t mean there was no emotion behind it.

“Doesn’t that mean it was the same for him? The new board chairman sent you to the consulate when the world might end today. He placed all that responsibility on your shoulders and let you handle it. Even though I’m sure there was at least one thing he wanted to protect with his own hands.”

Qliphah Puzzle 545 didn’t raise her head from the ground covered in red snow. She curled up, balled up, and shook.

Sobs spilled from her.

Maybe she didn’t want them to see her crying.

That was the moment when something inside Hamazura Shiage that he couldn’t quite put to words crossed a line.

(This world can really go to hell. Why should she have to be embarrassed about that?)

Qliphah Puzzle 545 was a demon. She was a created being. She had come from Coronzon.

None of that could change.

But all she wanted to do was walk next to a familiar person in this ordinary world.

Yet she had been pushed this far.

She had done all this.

Hamazura slowly turned around. To face Coronzon.

“Hey, Coronzon.”

“What is it, Hamazura? If you’re hoping for some odd job to do, wait about an hour and get back to me.”

An hour.

Did that mean the world was set to end at around 11 PM?

Dion Fortune ''had'' said her estimate was optimistic. Still, this was earlier than the midnight estimate.

“Surely you don’t think you can defeat me just because you know a little bit about me. Mathers thought he could control me and Aleister had researched me ten thousand times more than you. Yet they both lost – everyone always does!! Even the great Golden cabal fell! And his legacy of Academy City is my toy as well. So what can you, who couldn’t even accomplish anything within the bounds of that city, hope to-!!!”

“''You’ve gone too far''.”

A grinding sound filled the air.

It may have been the grinding of teeth.

Great Demon Coronzon had fallen silent.

After a full three seconds, she began again.

“Then what will you do about me?”

“That depends on your answer.”

“Do you think you are in any position to test me, fool!!?”

===Part 12===

And.

===Part 13===

Kamijou Touma also arrived.

At the former District 7 site of the Windowless Building.

At that square center of the world.

“Hi,” said Coronzon.

It was 10:30 PM. It had been a close thing, but he had arrived in time.

“What took you so long? I was so bored. Adikalika is such a pain to prepare. I wish I could just activate it already, but it has forced this great demon to wait.”

Two people lay collapsed at her feet. Was that Hamazura Shiage and Takitsubo Rikou? It was just as he’d feared. They weren’t sure their forces combined could defeat Great Demon Coronzon, so it was too dangerous for any one of them to move out ahead.

What had happened here?

“You should thank them, Kamijou Touma. Arriving here wasn’t your accomplishment alone.”

…Was that the red snow?

He thought it was. Hoped it was.

Please someone say that wasn’t human blood.

Yes.

And come to think of it…

“What ended up happening to Nephthys and Niang-Niang?”

“What do you think happened?”

He had no response for that.

Amused, Coronzon asked him again.

“Tell me, Kamijou Touma. Surely you didn’t actually think those two would defeat me and bring peace to the world? If you had, you wouldn’t have spent your time afterwards planning and preparing to face me. Ha ha! So you must have known the moment you fled!! You knew those two would lose and you still chose to save your own skin!! So am I the only villain here!? Ha ha ha ha ha! Sure, I’m the one who delivered the finishing blow, but you were the one who pushed them toward it!!”

Yes.

That was true.

He still didn’t know what had happened to the two Magic Gods, but…

He was afraid to die. He had learned to feel that ordinary emotion, but now he had survived by forcing the unpleasantness onto someone else. There was no denying that.

“So were you so intent on surviving because you wanted a front-row seat to Adikalika’s activation? You stained your own soul to survive, yet soon you will be destroyed along with the rest of the world.”

He had made Alice cry and she killed him.

He had gone to hell and received the ticket to resurrection that Kingsford or CRC could have used instead.

Magic Gods Nephthys and Niang-Niang had told him to run away.

What had he hoped to do after all that?

He had had plenty of opportunities to refuse and stop.

So what had he been so reluctant to leave behind that he never gave up on living?

“Making Aleister despair and releasing me was truly the crowning achievement of your folly. So maybe you do deserve a gift. But just this once, okay? I will give you what you want. I will slice through your body, grab your head, and hold it in place, so enjoy watching the end of the world without even being able to die!!”

“''Give it a rest, Coronzon''.”

Others had been saving him this whole time.

He wanted to end that chain here. He wanted to stand on his own two feet.

He wanted to apologize to all the people he had troubled with his death and he wanted to return to his ordinary life.

Was that so wrong?

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume13 Chapter4

2025-08-17T05:45:50Z

Churronzon: It

==Chapter 4: Call That Name – Shout_the_Summon.==

===Part 1===

Not much time remained until Adikalika’s activation.

Alice Anotherbible was not here. Nor was Anna Sprengel. The Bologna Succubus and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet were apparently creating a diversion and Dion Fortune was battling the Moina Mathers released by Coronzon.

Kamijou Touma had no choice.

He had to fight.

He didn’t just observe one point on Coronzon. He observed every part of her.

It was his only option.

Because she wasn’t going to attack him swinging around a knife. It could be her lips, her arms, or her spread wings. Any of it could form an incantation, a gesture, a magic circle which would indicate an attack. He couldn’t overlook a thing.

She was smirking thinly.

At him and his foolish decision to not break free of the shell known as common sense.

“One word of warning.”

“What!?”

“Whether you resist or not is up to your excessive human free will…but it will be much easier for you if the first attack kills you.”

A golden vortex formed.

It was made of…

“Hair!?”

Was it a giant spear or a scorpion tail?

The destructive attack thrust in from an unexpected direction, but Kamijou somehow managed to brush it aside with his right hand, negating it.

As soon as it popped like a balloon, it took on a completely different form.

It formed a giant crab, then a fat and twisted fly, and then a snake slithering along the ground before leaping at him.

“Imagine Breaker. I suppose I must admit to its power as an unshakable reference point for the world and its ability to negate any supernatural power.”

Coronzon held herself in her arms, spread her wings, and chuckled.

“Your right hand can indeed negate magic. But only one spell per attack. You haven’t forgotten I can launch a second spell too, have you?”

Not good.

Negation wasn’t enough for this enemy!

If negating one spell would lead to multiple new threats, he was in trouble. Kamijou clenched his teeth and turned his attention in her direction.

But at that very moment, he heard the air bursting.

The phases ground together, clashed, and collided with a great power, creating a deadly distortion.

The sparks became visible.

Coronzon whispered bewitchingly.

“''A great maw.''”

“!?”

They rushed in from all around him at once.

In this case, even obeying his instincts as a living creature and cowering down was meaningless. If he did that, the jaws would snap shut and he would have nowhere to escape. So instead he leaped hard to the right, approaching one of the sparks, and smashing it with his fist. Before the ring could fully close in around him, he rolled along the red snow to distance himself from the center point.

It didn’t end there.

Kamijou was risking his life with each and every move, but it was all a silly game to her.

Coronzon whispered.

“I am a demon, but not from the Qliphoth where the forces of evil gather. I am the great demon hidden by the holy Sephiroth. I dwell in the same abyss as Da’at.”

She held her left hand straight out and her right hand pulled back toward herself.

The pose resembled aiming a rapier.

“Every number is the same. My right hand contains Nuit of Resurrection. Watch as the possibilities expand and surpass the bounds of the finite. My left hand contains Hadit of Vengeance. The smallest point gathers and concentrates all forces to create a single meaning. Thus, an attack shall be released from the infinite acceleration of the Circle of Ra-Hoor-Khuit and shall appear on the surface layer of this world.”

A chill ran down Kamijou Touma’s spine.

This was bad.

He had been on the receiving end of this spell when he first clashed with Coronzon. It was a much too powerful torrent of power. Back then, he had tried and failed to stop it with his right hand and been torn apart, his bones and organs destroyed.

“But I showed this one off last time.” Coronzon grinned. “Still, weaving it into a combo should lure you into position for a hit.”

As soon as Kamijou frantically tried to jump from his position, a golden scorpion and spider rushed in from the sides.

They were only meant to hold him in place, but a hit from the venomous tail or sharp legs would still kill him.

Now he couldn’t escape.

“Oh, no.”

He should have focused on the flow of attacks instead of viewing each in isolation.

And after he had told himself at the start to observe everything as a whole.

(Damn, now I can’t dodge it!!)

Yet if he tried to stop it with his right hand, he probably wouldn’t be able to fully negate the torrent of power and it would tear his body apart.

White lightning dropped from the sky.

Coronzon didn’t even look up.

“Really, is there some rule that everyone who sits the board chairman seat must be a fool? Aleister easily deflected that one and you expect it to work on me, #1?

“Also,” continued the great demon. “If you can attack me from there, then I can attack you from here.”

===Part 2===

''Bang!!!

In the most tightly secured cell of a far distant prison, the giant LCD monitor on the wall shattered. Glass shards flew out in great quantity and shredded Board Chairman Accelerator’s body.

“Gah…”

(My reflection…didn’t work? They slipped right past my vector control barrier?)

“Dammit. So it’s a power…from that side of things…”

===Part 3===

Only static came from Kamijou’s wireless earphone, but even that ended eventually.

He was dumbfounded as he used his right hand to negate the scorpion and spider made of blonde hair.

No response.

The board chairman had been taken out too easily.

Especially considering he was Academy City’s #1 Level 5.

Great Demon Coronzon’s strength was on another level entirely!!

“His ability to attack anywhere in the city from that one point also means that one point can be attacked from anywhere in the city. Much like the rules regarding gazing into the Abyss.”

Coronzon looked like she was viewing some distant place while standing here.

Was she sneering at Accelerator who she had just defeated?

Or was she recalling the previous board chairman who had developed the #1?

“Still, for someone sniping people from hiding, it’s curious how careless you were about the standard rules for line of sight. Is that another blind spot created by your reflection, Academy City’s #1?”

Her focus shifted from the distant to the near.

Coronzon’s target was now Kamijou.

“And have you forgotten, Kamijou Touma?”

“Kh.”

“I have a winning move. As long as no one intervenes, I only need to repeat the process to pierce you.”

“Dammit!!”

She was right.

The long, long hair spear, the scattered crab and fly scouts, and the invisible maw formed from countless sparks. He knew that series of attacks was coming, but he could not break free of the rails. Position, movement, distance – Coronzon only had to use small steps to adjust those factors and Kamijou would effectively be trapped in a thick cage. It was like a shogi problem only requiring a predetermined series of moves.

And the time had come.

Coronzon made her sneering announcement.

While directing the tip of an immaterial rapier toward him.

“Magick: Flaming_Sword. Manifest thyself through descent of the Sephirah and bathe him in thy power.”

''Blam!!!

He had no choice but to block it.

This was beyond the limits of his right hand.

But rather than strike it with his fist, touching his palm to it and swinging his arm to deflect it away just barely qualified as a correct answer. His arm made a disconcerting creaking sound, but the bones were not broken.

But that was all.

Kamijou Touma’s feet left the ground. As soon as he noticed that, his body was thrown backwards.

Twice, thrice he bounced along the red snow before entering a roll.

He only tasted a rusty flavor.

He supposed still having senses at all was a plus. That meant he wasn’t unconscious.

…Unlike last time.

“I told you.”

“…”

“I only need to repeat the process. You didn’t think this was a one-time-use ability, did you? This is an elementary move. Our last battle was cut short when your right hand went nuts, but, well, this is what happens when I actually make an effort to surround you.”

She was overwhelming and then some.

Last time, the British magic experts had gathered together and somehow managed to pull out a win, so taking on this monster alone had been a mistake.

“You aren’t hoping circumstances will change if you buy enough time, are you? Could this be a stalling tactic so you can let Alice Anotherbible, Anna Sprengel, or another extraordinary member of your party deal with me?”

Great Demon Coronzon had been pure terror to begin with.

But the squeezing at Kamijou’s heart was even greater now.

“They aren’t coming. Because I set it up that way. Kamijou Touma, Hamazura Shiage, and Takitsubo Rikou. Oh, and there was that Qliphah Puzzle 545 too. You four were simply low on my priority list, so I didn’t get around to trapping you in a labyrinth before you arrived.”

One by one, Coronzon plucked away his hopes and possibilities. All with a sneer.

Almost like a child traveling all the way to a flower field, capturing a bug, flipping it over, and innocently tearing out its legs.

“So all I need to do is repeat the process, taking as much time as I need to kill you. Don’t worry about how much it will cost me. Nothing you think can help you escape now.”

“Damn…”

“You see, I can spend as much time on this as I want. But Adikalika will activate in less than half an hour. So it’s you that needs to stop playing around and seriously try to stop me.”

He was far from unscathed. In fact, he was in state of extreme tension where a wrong choice in when to blink could mean instant death.

“Dispersion? Natural decomposition? Destroying the current world?”

But still Kamijou was not broken.

His right fist was intact.

“To hell with that, Coronzon. Who alive today is going to accept that!?”

“My value is 333, my meaning is dispersion. I am the one who tears apart the bonds between people and obstructs their evolution.”

Coronzon whispered her own purpose as if rolling it around in her mouth.

And she looked up.

Once more.

“Keh heh heh. You humans were given the freedom to choose for yourselves yet you continue to let others make your choices based on ‘information’ and ‘trends’, so you can never understand those who were only given a single path.”

“Freedom?”

Kamijou frowned.

The jealousy in her voice made it sound like that was something she didn’t have.

How could she say that after everything she had done?

But before he could say so.

It all flowed out like a rotten clump.

“God made all his creation in accordance to his plan. Not a single part of his plan failed. So it naturally follows that all this world’s sin and vice function as gears in his master plan. That includes all things in this world. Yes, the scams, the theft, the violence, the murder, the swords, the guns, the poison gas, the nuclear weapons – everything!! Vices that even a great demon like me could never imagine will continue to be discovered in this world!! 333, dispersion. The one who lurks in the Abyss hidden in the Sephiroth and obstructs human evolution. God is omniscient and omnipotent. He knew from the beginning I contained the possibility to betray him, to become a hideous demon, and to lose the war! So why didn’t he stop me!?”

“…”

Did she sound like she was spitting on heaven because she was a being known as a great demon?

If so, had these very words been expected by someone?

Coronzon put on a twisted smile.

“Because a creation is no more than a creation, it is difficult for me to escape my traits and my role. Unlike the humans who were tempted into eating the fruit, we – the beings known as angels and demons – have much greater restrictions placed upon us. You could say we are god’s tools. Just as a sword is a sword and cannot be a dinner knife or fork, we can make use of – or even abuse – the abilities given to us within the bounds of our created purpose, but we can never take an entirely different path.”

What was this?

The previous diagram was breaking down.

Or could it be?

Was the very act of understanding Coronzon’s feelings and inner state enough to drag one toward vice?

“So there is but one way to bare my fangs toward heaven. Instead of futilely resisting, ''I must take my purpose farther than he ever imagined, derailing his plan in the process''!! That gives me a chance of ruining god’s plan without ever betraying my purpose in being here. I!! I am here to fight against all the tragedy that occurs in a world designed for someone else’s benefit!!!”

Coronzon spread her arms and wings wide as she made this grand proclamation.

“You’re…kidding,” muttered Kamijou Touma.

Without thinking.

She was 333, dispersion. So she could not allow anything to exist forever and would ensure all things faced natural decomposition.

That was indeed her original purpose, but it only described a method. No one had touched on what she would gain by breaking down the entire world. No one had mentioned her personal objective.

The answer was a simple one.

That being who far surpassed the bounds of humanity could be summed up as follows:

''She was sick of it.

333, dispersion. She tore apart the bonds between people and obstructed their evolution. Those were the hideous numbers and symbols within her – at her very core. When comparing herself to the many other beings who dedicated themselves to roles of bright blessings – mercy, protection, honesty, safety – she couldn’t accept that she existed only for that dark function.

So she had tried to overturn that.

Coronzon wrapped her arms around herself, doubled over, and screamed.

As if trying to forcibly seal away the source of her nausea, which just so happened to be the very core of her being.

“It makes me sick! Oh, so sick!! Both myself for being used in that way and the humans who think this power has any value and create so many spells to interfere with me! But most of all, the world that requires ''me'' repulses me!! Do you understand, good one who always strives to be righteous despite your imperfection!? God knew I would stray. So! I was robbed the chance to grasp even the tiniest sliver of freedom by rebelling of my own free will!!!”

In a way, it was like being forced into the role of telling people to fail and find misfortune.

She was a tool only expected to harm and frustrate others.

No matter how powerful she might be and no matter how important the seat she sat in, the very first assumption had distorted her. How could she find any confidence in that situation?

She had been told she was a necessary part of the world.

But when god had created her from the start as someone capable of rebelling, even that could perhaps have a purpose.

Her power was to tear people apart and prevent their evolution. That was who she was. A great demon.

This world could not exist without that despicable and contemptible system and the current age could not function without so much anger, sorrow, resignation, and infighting, so Coronzon had concluded they were far too twisted and imperfect.

So.

She had decided to use every last part of what she was to destroy ''the plan she didn’t understand and without even trying to understand it.

She had wanted the fastest way of doing that.

She had settled on something she could reach out and touch.

She thought her best option was to destroy the world that god had created and raised.

“Am I nothing more than a sumptuous feast for you humans, designed to fail in order to give you courage when you defeat me? Or am the deluge bucket, designed to succeed so that my thorough destruction can cleanse this impure world? The answer doesn’t really matter.”

Uh, oh.

This went beyond the degree of violence.

Great Demon Coronzon had something that would overwhelm others on another dimension altogether, more closely related to concepts of good, righteousness, and the mental struggle against doom!!

“Either way, if I simply take the role of my symbols and value ''too far'', I can derail and ruin it all without violating the rules. So you cannot convince me with words. I will never hold back. I will activate Adikalika here no matter what! I will bring this to a level that will make anyone – yes, even god himself – hold their head in their hands and look away!!!”

Something exploded.

Coronzon spread her arms and roared as light exploded out from her in a dome.

Light.

A dazzling white.

As if screaming that her rebellion against heaven was the truly righteous and correct choice.

“…Ah…”

Maybe it had been a mistake to listen to her.

How could Kamijou Touma overcome this when his own position was starting to waver?

The blast struck him across his body.

He was knocked back, thrown through the air, and fell to the ground. He rolled again and again, throwing red snow into the air.

It was night and Academy City didn’t have many lights on since repairs were still slow in coming, but neither was the reason his vision rapidly grew dark.

It blinked in and out.

He felt no pain. Nor any obvious fear or panic. All of those active emotions were melting away from his mind. It reminded him of when Alice Anotherbible had killed him in his school that night. The same sensation was filling him once more. Mercilessly.

Oh, no.

This time…he really was going to…

===Part 4===

The night wind raged.

The darkness was colored by the blowing red snow.

Only a winged figure stood within it. Kamijou Touma had still clenched his right fist, but that was all. He had passed out with his fist still tight. He was completely out.

The communication line was staticky and there was no response from the person on the other end. Physical distance and thick walls were meaningless against magical curses. They provided no defense. New Board Chairman Accelerator had also been fully silenced.

It was quiet.

Divinely so.

“Qliphah Puzzle 545.”

“Kh.”

The artificial demon floating stealthily in the air shook when she was called out without even a glance in her direction.

“You could try that stunt again, but know first that I have ''already developed a countermeasure''. Leviathan was it? That sacrificial spell will only lead to a meaningless death. So settle down and watch the end of the world. That would be the better option for a lonely demon like you.”

Red snow fell through the dark night.

Adikalika’s countdown continued unabated, but no one remained to stop it.

The world’s fate was sealed.

No…

“So you’re the last one left, Hamazura Shiage.”

A voice spoke.

As if recalling old times.

Another form had gotten back up.

Quietly.

He was battered and bloody, but Hamazura Shiage was not dead yet.

With an ironic smile, Coronzon spread the wings on her back.

“I can’t imagine what an ordinary human can accomplish, but fine. As a human, you lack perfect righteousness yet work desperately to gather up the fragments of a good heart. Toying with that treasure without realizing its value to me is the height of folly. So fight back against my annihilation.”

“Y’know.”

Hamazura Shiage sat down in the red snow.

Yes, he did not duck down or dive behind cover.

Almost suicidally, he sat right in front of Great Demon Coronzon.

And he let the words spill out.

“I had a feeling it would end up this way. The last one standing wasn’t going to be Kamijou Touma or Accelerator. Coronzon, since it’s about you, I had a feeling it’d be me, even if I don’t really belong here.”

“Are you suggesting that I showed mercy to my enemy because we are acquaintances? You think I, a great demon, standing here as a concentration of vice, would do that?”

“No, I don’t think that’s it.”

Hamazura’s voice sounded somehow empty.

But also confident.

He ''personally'' knew Coronzon, not through hearsay or myth.

“You’re logical. You’re trying to destroy the world for a very rational reason. So you labeled everyone opposing you an enemy and you defeated them. It’s simple really. You eliminated them because they were trying to stop you, so ''you don’t actually hate Kamijou Touma or Accelerator''.”

Yes.

She didn’t hate them, but not for some emotional reason. There just wasn’t any connection between them.

Kamijou Touma and Accelerator were nothing more than strangers to Coronzon. What reason did she have to thoroughly hate Villager A?

“Ha ha! Then what? Have you accepted it yourself? You’re saying I forgot to even mark you an enemy because you’re just some pathetic delinquent? Even then, anyone who stands before me is an enemy. I will destroy anyone and everyone who tries to stop Adikalika. You damn gnat. You cannot stop me, Hamazura Shiage!!”

“''That’s not it either.''”

He rejected her claim again.

Immediately.

Even Coronzon had to frown now.

Could the being known as a great demon not understand this tiny truth?

“''I’m not working against you.'' I no longer have any reason to attack you.”

“I…don’t understand.”

“Go ahead.”

With those words, it was Coronzon who grimaced.

But seeing the look on her face, he spoke clearly.

“I know all too well this world is shit. I mean, I’m a Level 0. That alone means I’ve got nothing. So go ahead. If the new age you imagine is a free and righteous place where everyone can be happy…”

“Hey, wait. Dammit, Hamazura, are you saying…!?”

“C’mon, Coronzon. Go ahead and do it.”

Yes.

When Hamazura faced Coronzon and she asked what he would do about her, he had said “that depends on your answer”.

“But…back in the UK, you stopped me, didn’t you? In the very end, with some help from Dion Fortune.”

“True,” admitted Hamazura. And then, “But I hadn’t actually processed what you said back then. I stuck with my own thoughts and simply thought I could save you too if I protected the world. …But how did that pan out? The instant you were free again, you got to work trying to destroy the world again. As if to say it’s the world that’s wrong. To be honest, I agree with you there. If the fighting continues with you or without you, then it doesn’t seem like you’re the source of the problem.”

From Hamazura Shiage’s point of view, Kamijou Touma and Accelerator were success stories too dazzlingly bright to look at. It wasn’t a matter of money, education, family, or esper level. No matter how much he tried, he knew he could never catch up to them.

So they would want to protect the world. Without a second thought.

Even if it meant risking their lives.

Even if something about the world felt off.

Ultimately, they wanted to protect the current world because they were reluctant to let it go. Because they were happy people who could imagine the benefits they would find in keeping the current system going.

If they were foolish, they would be fine with that.

They would foolishly look only to their own happiness and continue to reap the benefits.

But what if they were clever? What if they were aware so many people were denied freedom and couldn’t obtain the things they had, but they continued to enjoy those benefits themselves? That was no different than trampling others in pursuit of their own happiness. It was an undeniable sin.

Protecting the world was not necessarily a good or righteous act.

If the wicked wealthy with all their injustices and dirty money said they were going to protect the world, who would praise them for it?

If the world had been rotten to the core from the beginning, then the meaning of that phrase flipped on its head.

Everyone thought of Great Demon Coronzon as an unpersuadable absolute evil.

Hamazura alone disagreed.

Because he had once broken away and fought alongside Coronzon.

And he had realized something because he saw her as a relative evil who could be reasoned with.

He suspected this world was hiding something that had pushed Coronzon to do this.

“Damn you…Hamazura…”

“You can see it, can’t you?”

That question was a rejection of everything Hamazura had believed in.

How much courage had it taken for a mere human to voice it?

It likely wouldn’t have been possible for Hamazura alone.

Which was why he was currently holding the hand of his girlfriend lying unconscious by his side.

He knew that would give him the courage he needed to face every obstacle this world could throw at him.

“You’ve viewed this world on a higher level than me and you’ve investigated this world with superior brains than mine. …If, in the end, the Great Demon Coronzon herself concluded this shitty world deserves to be destroyed, then that’s probably the right answer. If even you had to give up with all your power, then there’s really nothing we can do. At the very least, I can’t think of anything to say to stop you. So you know what? …''I think you might as well go ahead and do it.'' Why not?”

This was a destructive third view that Kamijou Touma and Accelerator could never have held.

This was Hamazura Shiage’s job.

Was it Dion Fortune who had said even Kamijou Touma was powerless against Coronzon?

“Are you kidding me!? Do you know what you’re saying!?”

“Why do you make it sound like you want me to stop you, Coronzon? I’m the all-purpose trump card. I’ll work with a great demon if it’ll save my girlfriend or just a friend. You weren’t expecting a softy like me to take on that role, were you?”

“Kh.”

“''That’s why''”

He wasn’t good or righteous. But he wasn’t fully evil either.

The ''soft'' boy continued.

“That’s why I’ll accept you. When I saved Qliphah Puzzle 545 earlier, I was even thinking this world can go to hell.”

If Takitsubo Rikou were awake here, he might have arrived at a different answer.

But he couldn’t do that now.

“Over and over, I’ve seen the depths of this world’s cruelty and how it wears down the people you love like some sick assembly line. Body Crystal? The Golden cabal? Everyone treats people’s lives like nothing more than a useful component and ''they praise that behavior like it’s a sign of strength and beauty.'' Can you believe it? And no one ever questions it. Not even the people being worn down! It’s obvious to anyone that this world is rotten to the core. …So if you’re going to get rid of all that glorification of complexity for the sake of complexity, give us nothing but an ordinary world full of ordinary things with nothing hiding below the surface, where everyone I love can laugh happily and worry-free forever and ever, then ''you’re clearly on the side of good and righteousness'', Coronzon.”

The higher being seemed taken back.

It couldn’t be.

Was someone really saying this to her at this stage?

She suddenly found herself the one pointing out the dangers.

This wasn’t right.

How did her role get so turned around!?

“Have you forgotten? Once the Adikalika large-scale attack spell activates, there is no stopping it. It will fully destroy all life in the target land. So the Italian Peninsula will be crushed and slashed into a hell of blood and bone. And after that, the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, Academy City, and the Russian Orthodox Church will all join in endless war! I have set them up in pairs so they will eliminate each other like matching cards in old maid, so every part of this world will be brought to an end!! Trying to curry my favor will not allow you to survi-!!”

“It’s hopeless regardless, right? Whether nor not you use that Adi-whatever.”

He didn’t let her finish.

He wasn’t speaking all that loudly, but Coronzon still fell silent.

As if he had struck her right in the heart.

“Hey, Coronzon. You’re not stupid and you’re not wild. With you, every single action is based on your intelligence. I saw just how incredibly smart you are back in that fight where you dragged the UK and the whole world into it.”

Hamazura spoke quietly.

Yes, the boy holding his unconscious girlfriend’s hand was quiet.

He did not shout and scream.

“I’ve been thinking. You couldn’t believe what I was doing, but you still helped me save Takitsubo Rikou and Dion Fortune. You had to have thought I was a burden and an idiot, but you never did betray me, leave me behind, or let me die. So I had to wonder why you’re doing this to Academy City. …It’s simple. You decided you had to start a global war. There’s something you can’t solve without taking it that far.”

“Are you saying you can see it? But how could a mere human do that?”

“I don’t know what it is. But you weren’t the one who messed up this world. It’s already so messed up that stopping you wouldn’t fix anything. So it’s past the point of not wanting to die or wanting to make sure at least my girlfriend survives. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it’s definitely going to happen if nothing is done. So betting on you seems like the best option. If I want even the slightest chance of the people I know surviving, someone has to force the world off its current course.”

“…”

“Or are you going to say I’m wrong?”

It wasn’t that Hamazura Shiage doubted the world was ending.

He could already tell the world had been rotten before Coronzon began any of this. It was so bad even a Level 0 idiot like him could tell. And if it was that bad on the surface, then the invisible core or central pillar of the world must have been badly eaten away by now.

He didn’t know what the termites gnawing away at the great tree actually were, but knowing that wasn’t important.

So that wasn’t what had shaken him.

There was something else he had to be certain of.

“Am I wrong to bet on you? Are you not worth it? Were you going on and on about your importance, but it was all talk and you just want to destroy the world for the hell of it? Will you end up sticking your tongue out, laughing, and going ‘oops, that didn’t accomplish anything’? Well, in that case, you really are a villain. If you’re causing trouble for so many people without doing anything worthwhile. If you’ll just keep all the money I’d bet on you because I trust you. If you can’t stick to goodness or righteousness and stall out somewhere in the middle without ever accomplishing anything, then you’re evil! If it’s all going to be pointless in the end, you might as well not have done anything in the first place!! Do you know what that’s called? It’s called being a troublemaker, the lowest and weakest type of villain, Coronzon!!!”

She hung her head.

The monster who was understood by no one said nothing for a while.

She appeared to be biting her lip.

And.

Finally.

“''Don’t make me laugh, human.''”

When she raised her head, she showed off the most demonic of faces.

“I came up with this plan myself, but it was you who gave me the final push, Hamazura Shiage. So I hope your soul shatters from the guilt of unnecessarily making yourself responsible for the countless corpses soon to litter the entire globe! …Adikalika!! O master of death and blood, incarnation of destruction, and black goddess of the 11th letter, break the current world’s pillar of good and submerge the very planet in an ocean of black blood!!!”

The world shined.

Behind Great Demon Coronzon, at the center of the empty space where the Windowless Building once stood, space itself was emitting a pale light as if something were gathering there. The pillar of light’s glow strengthened in stages. It was already past the point of no return.

In that moment, Hamazura Shiage smiled. While squeezing his collapsed and unmoving girlfriend’s hand.

Just a bit.

As if he were at the train station sadly seeing off a friend who was moving away.

“Sorry I couldn’t give you a world you can accept.”

“~ ~ ~!!!?”

Never before.

Not even once.

No one had never accepted that great demon and even she had failed to accept her own function and thus chose to curse god and herself, so she looked like she badly wanted to say something.

She had clearly lost.

Kamijou Touma, Accelerator, Aleister Crowley, and even Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers had all failed to bring that look to her face.

Of pain.

And anguish.

She began to say something.

“Hamazur-”

She never finished.

The light exploded.

===Part 5===

Shortly before that.

Kamijou Touma lay collapsed on the ground, half buried in red snow.

Something was wrong with his body. He couldn’t seem to get up.

He actually felt no pain, making it hard to figure out what part of him was broken. In his state, the lack of a bloody smell actually seemed unnatural. So he guesses his senses were acting up too.

He had been damaged in some lethal way.

That much he was somehow certain of.

Even so, he glared out of eyes that could barely see anything anymore.

Someone was talking.

Hamazura Shiage and Great Demon Coronzon.

They were preparing to do something decisive.

He didn’t know the details.

His ears weren’t working right. Even his brain was nearly dead and he couldn’t manage to break down and comprehend human language.

Even so.

He understood.

If the current sequence of events wasn’t stopped here, then it ''truly was'' all over.

So he slowly moved his right hand.

Stretching it out.

It would never reach.

Even though it was right over there. He could see the glowing pillar of Adikalika from here, yet it was just too far away.

Was it no use?

He understood what Great Demon Coronzon had said.

Something other than his physical strength was on his mind.

He always fought using his clenched fist, but even he thought it was a raw deal.

No one would want the job of tearing people apart. All she could do was was choose to rebel. What she did wasn’t on the level of forcing someone to give up on a reckless dream because they would be happier that way in the long run. She really did just tear relationships apart. Nothing more than that. She already didn’t like it, but she wasn’t even allowed an excuse for herself as she did it. And this naturally led to everyone else loathing her. If you were told that was all you could ever do until you were dead and gone, of course you would despair. And since the angels and demons were higher beings than humans, it had to be all the more unbearable to have nothing but that function.

She would want to change it if she could.

She wanted to reject it.

Kamijou thought those were natural reactions.

He understood.

But he didn’t want the current world to be destroyed.

He didn’t want the people living there to be hurt.

He wasn’t talking about the Magic Gods, Transcendents, or other special humans whose special powers and abilities would make their deaths a great loss for the world as a whole.

He was thinking of the dumb conversations at school and all the nonsense that happened in his dorm room.

He wanted to protect those ordinary things.

He wanted the ordinary things to continue being ordinary.

Without fear.

Without trembling at the possibility of being lost.

Wouldn’t it have started out that way for Coronzon too?

Wasn’t it because she understood the importance of people’s small and ordinary feelings that she couldn’t forgive this world for requiring a person who tore people apart, that brought her despair in having that role forced onto her, and that had ultimately led her to rebel against heaven?

Was this what she really wanted to do?

Was it really right to let the victor destroy the entire world without getting any clear answers to these questions?

If the world really ended now…

If Coronzon herself wasn’t sure if she would gain anything from her victory…

Then how could the humans accept their impending deaths!?

(Someone…)

Kamijou’s throat was dry as a bone.

Maybe even the mucous membranes inside his body had been scorched.

(I don’t care who.)

Even so.

What could he do?

It could be anything, he just didn’t want to give up.

He forced his throat to move as if peeling it apart.

And still collapsed, the boy only had one thing to say. As if in prayer.

“…………H…………e…………l…………p…………”

===Part 6===

“You got it.” “You got it.”

===Part 7===

It sounded like a song.

The lovely girl’s voice controlled everything.

“ATOA. JOEAGTTA.(Alter target of Adikalika. Jump over Europe and go to the Atlantic.)”

And…

“What…?”

Great Demon Coronzon turned her gaze aside.

She knew Adikalika had ''activated''.

It had been launched.

But she didn’t understand.

Why hadn’t she sensed the result?

Her eyes widened past the limit and viewed someplace other than here before groaning.

“It was released. The Adikalika large-scale attack spell was launched… So why isn’t the Italian Peninsula submerged in a sea of blood, flesh, and bone!?”

“Because you redirected it yourself. Although it was my Spell Intercept that made you do it.”

The response was calm.

It was a girl’s voice.

“That spell targets a land named by humans and it brings slaughter to everyone there. That means it won’t have any effect if it’s sent somewhere without a name. It was short hair’s idea. She said Japan has a lot of unnamed islands that are only identified with numbers. And other countries do that too.”

“Damn…you.”

“No matter how big the spell, no matter how intricate the preparation, and even if it is carried out by a higher being far greater than humans…magic is still magic. The spells of angels and demons are based on the same foundation, but did it never occur to you that they could therefore be obstructed by humans?”

“You mean the filthy tongue of a mere human was violating my mind!?”

Coronzon raged, spread her wings wide, and began to yell, but she was forced to fall back a few steps.

Because of something flying in at three times the speed of sound.

With a “boom!!!”, the air was fiercely compressed a moment later.

After catching the projectile in her palm, she could tell what it was. It was half melted, but that was an ordinary arcade coin.

“Oh? Well, that’s unusual. I’ve seen a few people send it back with their reflection, gravity, or some other cheap ability…but I never thought I’d see an idiot catch it with pure brute strength. Oh, wait. Those Magic God people could do that, couldn’t they?”

“Damn you… Damn you both…”

Coronzon growled the words like a deadly curse.

As if the repetition would build up her resentment.

The “zap!!” of a high-voltage current burst out.

Hamazura Shiage had tried something and received a lightning spear, sending him down onto the red snow.

Now Coronzon really was alone.

She had begun this plan alone, but for some reason she now felt a hole in her heart. And not a small one either.

And.

The pillar of light was gone.

The Adikalika large-scale attack spell had been launched, but only launched.

Not a single person had died.

This miracle had not been brought about by Kamijou Touma.

But this was clearly the result that loser had asked for.

“Alice Anotherbible and Anna Sprengel never made it here. Yet you outsiders did? It doesn’t add up. If you could just walk here, they wouldn’t have used parachutes!!”

Coronzon began ranting, but she soon stopped.

Her accumulation of resentment had ceased.

She was empty.

No, she had realized there was a precedent.

Hadn’t Anna Kingsford done something similar in hell?

And hadn’t ''the other Anna'' been here?

In other words…

“No, it isn’t just that those two never arrived. Did they intentionally ''give up'' their spots!? To ensure these two could reach the center!? Did they use magical tricks to let them pass straight through the invisible labyrinth without my noticing!?”

No voice answered her.

Instead, the two girls took a step toward Coronzon.

Straight toward her.

“Do you really have time for that? Unlike Touma, you don’t have anyone coming to save you.”

“I don’t know what any of this great demon stuff is about, but I hope you don’t think you can hurt my idiot this badly and get away with it.”

Index of the magical world.

Misaka Mikoto of the scientific world.

Those two girls had heard a certain boy’s cry.

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume13 Chapter4

2025-08-17T05:26:56Z

Churronzon: typo

==Chapter 4: Call That Name – Shout_the_Summon.==

===Part 1===

Not much time remained until Adikalika’s activation.

Alice Anotherbible was not here. Nor was Anna Sprengel. The Bologna Succubus and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet were apparently creating a diversion and Dion Fortune was battling the Moina Mathers released by Coronzon.

Kamijou Touma had no choice.

He had to fight.

He didn’t just observe one point on Coronzon. He observed every part of her.

It was his only option.

Because she wasn’t going to attack him swinging around a knife. It could be her lips, her arms, or her spread wings. Any of it could form an incantation, a gesture, a magic circle which would indicate an attack. He couldn’t overlook a thing.

She was smirking thinly.

At him and his foolish decision to not break free of the shell known as common sense.

“One word of warning.”

“What!?”

“Whether you resist or not is up to your excessive human free will…but it will be much easier for you if the first attack kills you.”

A golden vortex formed.

It was made of…

“Hair!?”

Was it a giant spear or a scorpion tail?

The destructive attack thrust in from an unexpected direction, but Kamijou somehow managed to brush it aside with his right hand, negating it.

As soon as it popped like a balloon, it took on a completely different form.

It formed a giant crab, then a fat and twisted fly, and then a snake slithering along the ground before leaping at him.

“Imagine Breaker. I suppose I must admit to its power as an unshakable reference point for the world and its ability to negate any supernatural power.”

Coronzon held herself in her arms, spread her wings, and chuckled.

“Your right hand can indeed negate magic. But only one spell per attack. You haven’t forgotten I can launch a second spell too, have you?”

Not good.

Negation wasn’t enough for this enemy!

If negating one spell would lead to multiple new threats, he was in trouble. Kamijou clenched his teeth and turned his attention in her direction.

But at that very moment, he heard the air bursting.

The phases ground together, clashed, and collided with a great power, creating a deadly distortion.

The sparks became visible.

Coronzon whispered bewitchingly.

“''A great maw.''”

“!?”

They rushed in from all around him at once.

In this case, even obeying his instincts as a living creature and cowering down was meaningless. If he did that, the jaws would snap shut and he would have nowhere to escape. So instead he leaped hard to the right, approaching one of the sparks, and smashing it with his fist. Before the ring could fully close in around him, he rolled along the red snow to distance himself from the center point.

It didn’t end there.

Kamijou was risking his life with each and every move, but it was all a silly game to her.

Coronzon whispered.

“I am a demon, but not from the Qliphoth where the forces of evil gather. I am the great demon hidden by the holy Sephiroth. I dwell in the same abyss as Da’at.”

She held her left hand straight out and her right hand pulled back toward herself.

The pose resembled aiming a rapier.

“Every number is the same. My right hand contains Nuit of Resurrection. Watch as the possibilities expand and surpass the bounds of the finite. My left hand contains Hadit of Vengeance. The smallest point gathers and concentrates all forces to create a single meaning. Thus, an attack shall be released from the infinite acceleration of the Circle of Ra-Hoor-Khuit and shall appear on the surface layer of this world.”

A chill ran down Kamijou Touma’s spine.

This was bad.

He had been on the receiving end of this spell when he first clashed with Coronzon. It was a much too powerful torrent of power. Back then, he had tried and failed to stop it with his right hand and been torn apart, his bones and organs destroyed.

“But I showed this one off last time.” Coronzon grinned. “Still, weaving it into a combo should lure you into position for a hit.”

As soon as Kamijou frantically tried to jump from his position, a golden scorpion and spider rushed in from the sides.

They were only meant to hold him in place, but a hit from the venomous tail or sharp legs would still kill him.

Now he couldn’t escape.

“Oh, no.”

He should have focused on the flow of attacks instead of viewing each in isolation.

And after he had told himself at the start to observe everything as a whole.

(Damn, now I can’t dodge it!!)

Yet if he tried to stop it with his right hand, he probably wouldn’t be able to fully negate the torrent of power and it would tear his body apart.

White lightning dropped from the sky.

Coronzon didn’t even look up.

“Really, is there some rule that everyone who sits the board chairman seat must be a fool? Aleister easily deflected that one and you expect it to work on me, #1?

“Also,” continued the great demon. “If you can attack me from there, then I can attack you from here.”

===Part 2===

''Bang!!!

In the most tightly secured cell of a far distant prison, the giant LCD monitor on the wall shattered. Glass shards flew out in great quantity and shredded Board Chairman Accelerator’s body.

“Gah…”

(My reflection…didn’t work? They slipped right past my vector control barrier?)

“Dammit. So it’s a power…from that side of things…”

===Part 3===

Only static came from Kamijou’s wireless earphone, but even that ended eventually.

He was dumbfounded as he used his right hand to negate the scorpion and spider made of blonde hair.

No response.

The board chairman had been taken out too easily.

Especially considering he was Academy City’s #1 Level 5.

Great Demon Coronzon’s strength was on another level entirely!!

“His ability to attack anywhere in the city from that one point also means that one point can be attacked from anywhere in the city. Much like the rules regarding gazing into the Abyss.”

Coronzon looked like she was viewing some distant place while standing here.

Was she sneering at Accelerator who she had just defeated?

Or was she recalling the previous board chairman who had developed the #1?

“Still, for someone sniping people from hiding, it’s curious how careless you were about the standard rules for line of sight. Is that another blind spot created by your reflection, Academy City’s #1?”

Her focus shifted from the distant to the near.

Coronzon’s target was now Kamijou.

“And have you forgotten, Kamijou Touma?”

“Kh.”

“I have a winning move. As long as no one intervenes, I only need to repeat the process to pierce you.”

“Dammit!!”

She was right.

The long, long hair spear, the scattered crab and fly scouts, and the invisible maw formed from countless sparks. He knew that series of attacks was coming, but he could not break free of the rails. Position, movement, distance – Coronzon only had to use small steps to adjust those factors and Kamijou would effectively be trapped in a thick cage. It was like a shogi problem only requiring a predetermined series of moves.

And the time had come.

Coronzon made her sneering announcement.

While directing the tip of an immaterial rapier toward him.

“Magick: Flaming_Sword. Manifest thyself through descent of the Sephirah and bathe him in thy power.”

''Blam!!!

He had no choice but to block it.

This was beyond the limits of his right hand.

But rather than strike it with his fist, touching his palm to it and swinging his arm to deflect it away just barely qualified as a correct answer. His arm made a disconcerting creaking sound, but the bones were not broken.

But that was all.

Kamijou Touma’s feet left the ground. As soon as he noticed that, his body was thrown backwards.

Twice, thrice he bounced along the red snow before entering a roll.

He only tasted a rusty flavor.

He supposed still having senses at all was a plus. That meant he wasn’t unconscious.

…Unlike last time.

“I told you.”

“…”

“I only need to repeat the process. You didn’t think this was a one-time-use ability, did you? This is an elementary move. Our last battle was cut short when your right hand went nuts, but, well, this is what happens when I actually make an effort to surround you.”

She was overwhelming and then some.

Last time, the British magic experts had gathered together and somehow managed to pull out a win, so taking on this monster alone had been a mistake.

“You aren’t hoping circumstances will change if you buy enough time, are you? Could this be a stalling tactic so you can let Alice Anotherbible, Anna Sprengel, or another extraordinary member of your party deal with me?”

Great Demon Coronzon had been pure terror to begin with.

But the squeezing at Kamijou’s heart was even greater now.

“They aren’t coming. Because I set it up that way. Kamijou Touma, Hamazura Shiage, and Takitsubo Rikou. Oh, and there was that Qliphah Puzzle 545 too. You four were simply low on my priority list, so I didn’t get around to trapping you in a labyrinth before you arrived.”

One by one, Coronzon plucked away his hopes and possibilities. All with a sneer.

Almost like a child traveling all the way to a flower field, capturing a bug, flipping it over, and innocently tearing out its legs.

“So all I need to do is repeat the process, taking as much time as I need to kill you. Don’t worry about how much it will cost me. Nothing you think can help you escape now.”

“Damn…”

“You see, I can spend as much time on this as I want. But Adikalika will activate in less than half an hour. So it’s you that needs to stop playing around and seriously try to stop me.”

He was far from unscathed. In fact, he was in state of extreme tension where a wrong choice in when to blink could mean instant death.

“Dispersion? Natural decomposition? Destroying the current world?”

But still Kamijou was not broken.

His right fist was intact.

“To hell with that, Coronzon. Who alive today is going to accept that!?”

“My value is 333, my meaning is dispersion. I am the one who tears apart the bonds between people and obstructs their evolution.”

Coronzon whispered her own purpose as if rolling it around in her mouth.

And she looked up.

Once more.

“Keh heh heh. You humans were given the freedom to choose for yourselves yet you continue to let others make your choices based on ‘information’ and ‘trends’, so you can never understand those who were only given a single path.”

“Freedom?”

Kamijou frowned.

The jealousy in her voice made it sound like that was something she didn’t have.

How could she say that after everything she had done?

But before he could say so.

It all flowed out like a rotten clump.

“God made all his creation in accordance to his plan. Not a single part of his plan failed. So it naturally follows that all this world’s sin and vice function as gears in his master plan. That includes all things in this world. Yes, the scams, the theft, the violence, the murder, the swords, the guns, the poison gas, the nuclear weapons – everything!! Vices that even a great demon like me could never imagine will continue to be discovered in this world!! 333, dispersion. The one who lurks in the Abyss hidden in the Sephiroth and obstructs human evolution. God is omniscient and omnipotent. He knew from the beginning I contained the possibility to betray him, to become a hideous demon, and to lose the war! So why didn’t he stop me!?”

“…”

Did she sound like she was spitting on heaven because she was a being known as a great demon?

If so, had these very words been expected by someone?

Coronzon put on a twisted smile.

“Because a creation is no more than a creation, it is difficult for me to escape my traits and my role. Unlike the humans who were tempted into eating the fruit, we – the beings known as angels and demons – have much greater restrictions placed upon us. You could say we are god’s tools. Just as a sword is a sword and cannot be a dinner knife or fork, we can make use of – or even abuse – the abilities given to us within the bounds of our created purpose, but we can never take an entirely different path.”

What was this?

The previous diagram was breaking down.

Or could it be?

Was the very act of understanding Coronzon’s feelings and inner state enough to drag one toward vice?

“So there is but one way to bare my fangs toward heaven. Instead of futilely resisting, ''I must take my purpose farther than he ever imagined, derailing his plan in the process''!! That gives me a chance of ruining god’s plan without ever betraying my purpose in being here. I!! I am here to fight against all the tragedy that occurs in a world designed for someone else’s benefit!!!”

Coronzon spread her arms and wings wide as she made this grand proclamation.

“You’re…kidding,” muttered Kamijou Touma.

Without thinking.

She was 333, dispersion. So she could not allow anything to exist forever and would ensure all things faced natural decomposition.

That was indeed her original purpose, but it only described a method. No one had touched on what she would gain by breaking down the entire world. No one had mentioned her personal objective.

The answer was a simple one.

That being who far surpassed the bounds of humanity could be summed up as follows:

''She was sick of it.

333, dispersion. She tore apart the bonds between people and obstructed their evolution. Those were the hideous numbers and symbols within her – at her very core. When comparing herself to the many other beings who dedicated themselves to roles of bright blessings – mercy, protection, honesty, safety – she couldn’t accept that she existed only for that dark function.

So she had tried to overturn that.

Coronzon wrapped her arms around herself, doubled over, and screamed.

As if trying to forcibly seal away the source of her nausea, which just so happened to be the very core of her being.

“I makes me sick! Oh, so sick!! Both myself for being used in that way and the humans who think this power has any value and create so many spells to interfere with me! But most of all, the world that requires ''me'' repulses me!! Do you understand, good one who always strives to be righteous despite your imperfection!? God knew I would stray. So! I was robbed the chance to grasp even the tiniest sliver of freedom by rebelling of my own free will!!!”

In a way, it was like being forced into the role of telling people to fail and find misfortune.

She was a tool only expected to harm and frustrate others.

No matter how powerful she might be and no matter how important the seat she sat in, the very first assumption had distorted her. How could she find any confidence in that situation?

She had been told she was a necessary part of the world.

But when god had created her from the start as someone capable of rebelling, even that could perhaps have a purpose.

Her power was to tear people apart and prevent their evolution. That was who she was. A great demon.

This world could not exist without that despicable and contemptible system and the current age could not function without so much anger, sorrow, resignation, and infighting, so Coronzon had concluded they were far too twisted and imperfect.

So.

She had decided to use every last part of what she was to destroy ''the plan she didn’t understand and without even trying to understand it.

She had wanted the fastest way of doing that.

She had settled on something she could reach out and touch.

She thought her best option was to destroy the world that god had created and raised.

“Am I nothing more than a sumptuous feast for you humans, designed to fail in order to give you courage when you defeat me? Or am the deluge bucket, designed to succeed so that my thorough destruction can cleanse this impure world? The answer doesn’t really matter.”

Uh, oh.

This went beyond the degree of violence.

Great Demon Coronzon had something that would overwhelm others on another dimension altogether, more closely related to concepts of good, righteousness, and the mental struggle against doom!!

“Either way, if I simply take the role of my symbols and value ''too far'', I can derail and ruin it all without violating the rules. So you cannot convince me with words. I will never hold back. I will activate Adikalika here no matter what! I will bring this to a level that will make anyone – yes, even god himself – hold their head in their hands and look away!!!”

Something exploded.

Coronzon spread her arms and roared as light exploded out from her in a dome.

Light.

A dazzling white.

As if screaming that her rebellion against heaven was the truly righteous and correct choice.

“…Ah…”

Maybe it had been a mistake to listen to her.

How could Kamijou Touma overcome this when his own position was starting to waver?

The blast struck him across his body.

He was knocked back, thrown through the air, and fell to the ground. He rolled again and again, throwing red snow into the air.

It was night and Academy City didn’t have many lights on since repairs were still slow in coming, but neither was the reason his vision rapidly grew dark.

It blinked in and out.

He felt no pain. Nor any obvious fear or panic. All of those active emotions were melting away from his mind. It reminded him of when Alice Anotherbible had killed him in his school that night. The same sensation was filling him once more. Mercilessly.

Oh, no.

This time…he really was going to…

===Part 4===

The night wind raged.

The darkness was colored by the blowing red snow.

Only a winged figure stood within it. Kamijou Touma had still clenched his right fist, but that was all. He had passed out with his fist still tight. He was completely out.

The communication line was staticky and there was no response from the person on the other end. Physical distance and thick walls were meaningless against magical curses. They provided no defense. New Board Chairman Accelerator had also been fully silenced.

It was quiet.

Divinely so.

“Qliphah Puzzle 545.”

“Kh.”

The artificial demon floating stealthily in the air shook when she was called out without even a glance in her direction.

“You could try that stunt again, but know first that I have ''already developed a countermeasure''. Leviathan was it? That sacrificial spell will only lead to a meaningless death. So settle down and watch the end of the world. That would be the better option for a lonely demon like you.”

Red snow fell through the dark night.

Adikalika’s countdown continued unabated, but no one remained to stop it.

The world’s fate was sealed.

No…

“So you’re the last one left, Hamazura Shiage.”

A voice spoke.

As if recalling old times.

Another form had gotten back up.

Quietly.

He was battered and bloody, but Hamazura Shiage was not dead yet.

With an ironic smile, Coronzon spread the wings on her back.

“I can’t imagine what an ordinary human can accomplish, but fine. As a human, you lack perfect righteousness yet work desperately to gather up the fragments of a good heart. Toying with that treasure without realizing its value to me is the height of folly. So fight back against my annihilation.”

“Y’know.”

Hamazura Shiage sat down in the red snow.

Yes, he did not duck down or dive behind cover.

Almost suicidally, he sat right in front of Great Demon Coronzon.

And he let the words spill out.

“I had a feeling it would end up this way. The last one standing wasn’t going to be Kamijou Touma or Accelerator. Coronzon, since it’s about you, I had a feeling it’d be me, even if I don’t really belong here.”

“Are you suggesting that I showed mercy to my enemy because we are acquaintances? You think I, a great demon, standing here as a concentration of vice, would do that?”

“No, I don’t think that’s it.”

Hamazura’s voice sounded somehow empty.

But also confident.

He ''personally'' knew Coronzon, not through hearsay or myth.

“You’re logical. You’re trying to destroy the world for a very rational reason. So you labeled everyone opposing you an enemy and you defeated them. It’s simple really. You eliminated them because they were trying to stop you, so ''you don’t actually hate Kamijou Touma or Accelerator''.”

Yes.

She didn’t hate them, but not for some emotional reason. There just wasn’t any connection between them.

Kamijou Touma and Accelerator were nothing more than strangers to Coronzon. What reason did she have to thoroughly hate Villager A?

“Ha ha! Then what? Have you accepted it yourself? You’re saying I forgot to even mark you an enemy because you’re just some pathetic delinquent? Even then, anyone who stands before me is an enemy. I will destroy anyone and everyone who tries to stop Adikalika. You damn gnat. You cannot stop me, Hamazura Shiage!!”

“''That’s not it either.''”

He rejected her claim again.

Immediately.

Even Coronzon had to frown now.

Could the being known as a great demon not understand this tiny truth?

“''I’m not working against you.'' I no longer have any reason to attack you.”

“I…don’t understand.”

“Go ahead.”

With those words, it was Coronzon who grimaced.

But seeing the look on her face, he spoke clearly.

“I know all too well this world is shit. I mean, I’m a Level 0. That alone means I’ve got nothing. So go ahead. If the new age you imagine is a free and righteous place where everyone can be happy…”

“Hey, wait. Dammit, Hamazura, are you saying…!?”

“C’mon, Coronzon. Go ahead and do it.”

Yes.

When Hamazura faced Coronzon and she asked what he would do about her, he had said “that depends on your answer”.

“But…back in the UK, you stopped me, didn’t you? In the very end, with some help from Dion Fortune.”

“True,” admitted Hamazura. And then, “But I hadn’t actually processed what you said back then. I stuck with my own thoughts and simply thought I could save you too if I protected the world. …But how did that pan out? The instant you were free again, you got to work trying to destroy the world again. As if to say it’s the world that’s wrong. To be honest, I agree with you there. If the fighting continues with you or without you, then it doesn’t seem like you’re the source of the problem.”

From Hamazura Shiage’s point of view, Kamijou Touma and Accelerator were success stories too dazzlingly bright to look at. It wasn’t a matter of money, education, family, or esper level. No matter how much he tried, he knew he could never catch up to them.

So they would want to protect the world. Without a second thought.

Even if it meant risking their lives.

Even if something about the world felt off.

Ultimately, they wanted to protect the current world because they were reluctant to let it go. Because they were happy people who could imagine the benefits they would find in keeping the current system going.

If they were foolish, they would be fine with that.

They would foolishly look only to their own happiness and continue to reap the benefits.

But what if they were clever? What if they were aware so many people were denied freedom and couldn’t obtain the things they had, but they continued to enjoy those benefits themselves? That was no different than trampling others in pursuit of their own happiness. It was an undeniable sin.

Protecting the world was not necessarily a good or righteous act.

If the wicked wealthy with all their injustices and dirty money said they were going to protect the world, who would praise them for it?

If the world had been rotten to the core from the beginning, then the meaning of that phrase flipped on its head.

Everyone thought of Great Demon Coronzon as an unpersuadable absolute evil.

Hamazura alone disagreed.

Because he had once broken away and fought alongside Coronzon.

And he had realized something because he saw her as a relative evil who could be reasoned with.

He suspected this world was hiding something that had pushed Coronzon to do this.

“Damn you…Hamazura…”

“You can see it, can’t you?”

That question was a rejection of everything Hamazura had believed in.

How much courage had it taken for a mere human to voice it?

It likely wouldn’t have been possible for Hamazura alone.

Which was why he was currently holding the hand of his girlfriend lying unconscious by his side.

He knew that would give him the courage he needed to face every obstacle this world could throw at him.

“You’ve viewed this world on a higher level than me and you’ve investigated this world with superior brains than mine. …If, in the end, the Great Demon Coronzon herself concluded this shitty world deserves to be destroyed, then that’s probably the right answer. If even you had to give up with all your power, then there’s really nothing we can do. At the very least, I can’t think of anything to say to stop you. So you know what? …''I think you might as well go ahead and do it.'' Why not?”

This was a destructive third view that Kamijou Touma and Accelerator could never have held.

This was Hamazura Shiage’s job.

Was it Dion Fortune who had said even Kamijou Touma was powerless against Coronzon?

“Are you kidding me!? Do you know what you’re saying!?”

“Why do you make it sound like you want me to stop you, Coronzon? I’m the all-purpose trump card. I’ll work with a great demon if it’ll save my girlfriend or just a friend. You weren’t expecting a softy like me to take on that role, were you?”

“Kh.”

“''That’s why''”

He wasn’t good or righteous. But he wasn’t fully evil either.

The ''soft'' boy continued.

“That’s why I’ll accept you. When I saved Qliphah Puzzle 545 earlier, I was even thinking this world can go to hell.”

If Takitsubo Rikou were awake here, he might have arrived at a different answer.

But he couldn’t do that now.

“Over and over, I’ve seen the depths of this world’s cruelty and how it wears down the people you love like some sick assembly line. Body Crystal? The Golden cabal? Everyone treats people’s lives like nothing more than a useful component and ''they praise that behavior like it’s a sign of strength and beauty.'' Can you believe it? And no one ever questions it. Not even the people being worn down! It’s obvious to anyone that this world is rotten to the core. …So if you’re going to get rid of all that glorification of complexity for the sake of complexity, give us nothing but an ordinary world full of ordinary things with nothing hiding below the surface, where everyone I love can laugh happily and worry-free forever and ever, then ''you’re clearly on the side of good and righteousness'', Coronzon.”

The higher being seemed taken back.

It couldn’t be.

Was someone really saying this to her at this stage?

She suddenly found herself the one pointing out the dangers.

This wasn’t right.

How did her role get so turned around!?

“Have you forgotten? Once the Adikalika large-scale attack spell activates, there is no stopping it. It will fully destroy all life in the target land. So the Italian Peninsula will be crushed and slashed into a hell of blood and bone. And after that, the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, Academy City, and the Russian Orthodox Church will all join in endless war! I have set them up in pairs so they will eliminate each other like matching cards in old maid, so every part of this world will be brought to an end!! Trying to curry my favor will not allow you to survi-!!”

“It’s hopeless regardless, right? Whether nor not you use that Adi-whatever.”

He didn’t let her finish.

He wasn’t speaking all that loudly, but Coronzon still fell silent.

As if he had struck her right in the heart.

“Hey, Coronzon. You’re not stupid and you’re not wild. With you, every single action is based on your intelligence. I saw just how incredibly smart you are back in that fight where you dragged the UK and the whole world into it.”

Hamazura spoke quietly.

Yes, the boy holding his unconscious girlfriend’s hand was quiet.

He did not shout and scream.

“I’ve been thinking. You couldn’t believe what I was doing, but you still helped me save Takitsubo Rikou and Dion Fortune. You had to have thought I was a burden and an idiot, but you never did betray me, leave me behind, or let me die. So I had to wonder why you’re doing this to Academy City. …It’s simple. You decided you had to start a global war. There’s something you can’t solve without taking it that far.”

“Are you saying you can see it? But how could a mere human do that?”

“I don’t know what it is. But you weren’t the one who messed up this world. It’s already so messed up that stopping you wouldn’t fix anything. So it’s past the point of not wanting to die or wanting to make sure at least my girlfriend survives. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it’s definitely going to happen if nothing is done. So betting on you seems like the best option. If I want even the slightest chance of the people I know surviving, someone has to force the world off its current course.”

“…”

“Or are you going to say I’m wrong?”

It wasn’t that Hamazura Shiage doubted the world was ending.

He could already tell the world had been rotten before Coronzon began any of this. It was so bad even a Level 0 idiot like him could tell. And if it was that bad on the surface, then the invisible core or central pillar of the world must have been badly eaten away by now.

He didn’t know what the termites gnawing away at the great tree actually were, but knowing that wasn’t important.

So that wasn’t what had shaken him.

There was something else he had to be certain of.

“Am I wrong to bet on you? Are you not worth it? Were you going on and on about your importance, but it was all talk and you just want to destroy the world for the hell of it? Will you end up sticking your tongue out, laughing, and going ‘oops, that didn’t accomplish anything’? Well, in that case, you really are a villain. If you’re causing trouble for so many people without doing anything worthwhile. If you’ll just keep all the money I’d bet on you because I trust you. If you can’t stick to goodness or righteousness and stall out somewhere in the middle without ever accomplishing anything, then you’re evil! If it’s all going to be pointless in the end, you might as well not have done anything in the first place!! Do you know what that’s called? It’s called being a troublemaker, the lowest and weakest type of villain, Coronzon!!!”

She hung her head.

The monster who was understood by no one said nothing for a while.

She appeared to be biting her lip.

And.

Finally.

“''Don’t make me laugh, human.''”

When she raised her head, she showed off the most demonic of faces.

“I came up with this plan myself, but it was you who gave me the final push, Hamazura Shiage. So I hope your soul shatters from the guilt of unnecessarily making yourself responsible for the countless corpses soon to litter the entire globe! …Adikalika!! O master of death and blood, incarnation of destruction, and black goddess of the 11th letter, break the current world’s pillar of good and submerge the very planet in an ocean of black blood!!!”

The world shined.

Behind Great Demon Coronzon, at the center of the empty space where the Windowless Building once stood, space itself was emitting a pale light as if something were gathering there. The pillar of light’s glow strengthened in stages. It was already past the point of no return.

In that moment, Hamazura Shiage smiled. While squeezing his collapsed and unmoving girlfriend’s hand.

Just a bit.

As if he were at the train station sadly seeing off a friend who was moving away.

“Sorry I couldn’t give you a world you can accept.”

“~ ~ ~!!!?”

Never before.

Not even once.

No one had never accepted that great demon and even she had failed to accept her own function and thus chose to curse god and herself, so she looked like she badly wanted to say something.

She had clearly lost.

Kamijou Touma, Accelerator, Aleister Crowley, and even Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers had all failed to bring that look to her face.

Of pain.

And anguish.

She began to say something.

“Hamazur-”

She never finished.

The light exploded.

===Part 5===

Shortly before that.

Kamijou Touma lay collapsed on the ground, half buried in red snow.

Something was wrong with his body. He couldn’t seem to get up.

He actually felt no pain, making it hard to figure out what part of him was broken. In his state, the lack of a bloody smell actually seemed unnatural. So he guesses his senses were acting up too.

He had been damaged in some lethal way.

That much he was somehow certain of.

Even so, he glared out of eyes that could barely see anything anymore.

Someone was talking.

Hamazura Shiage and Great Demon Coronzon.

They were preparing to do something decisive.

He didn’t know the details.

His ears weren’t working right. Even his brain was nearly dead and he couldn’t manage to break down and comprehend human language.

Even so.

He understood.

If the current sequence of events wasn’t stopped here, then it ''truly was'' all over.

So he slowly moved his right hand.

Stretching it out.

It would never reach.

Even though it was right over there. He could see the glowing pillar of Adikalika from here, yet it was just too far away.

Was it no use?

He understood what Great Demon Coronzon had said.

Something other than his physical strength was on his mind.

He always fought using his clenched fist, but even he thought it was a raw deal.

No one would want the job of tearing people apart. All she could do was was choose to rebel. What she did wasn’t on the level of forcing someone to give up on a reckless dream because they would be happier that way in the long run. She really did just tear relationships apart. Nothing more than that. She already didn’t like it, but she wasn’t even allowed an excuse for herself as she did it. And this naturally led to everyone else loathing her. If you were told that was all you could ever do until you were dead and gone, of course you would despair. And since the angels and demons were higher beings than humans, it had to be all the more unbearable to have nothing but that function.

She would want to change it if she could.

She wanted to reject it.

Kamijou thought those were natural reactions.

He understood.

But he didn’t want the current world to be destroyed.

He didn’t want the people living there to be hurt.

He wasn’t talking about the Magic Gods, Transcendents, or other special humans whose special powers and abilities would make their deaths a great loss for the world as a whole.

He was thinking of the dumb conversations at school and all the nonsense that happened in his dorm room.

He wanted to protect those ordinary things.

He wanted the ordinary things to continue being ordinary.

Without fear.

Without trembling at the possibility of being lost.

Wouldn’t it have started out that way for Coronzon too?

Wasn’t it because she understood the importance of people’s small and ordinary feelings that she couldn’t forgive this world for requiring a person who tore people apart, that brought her despair in having that role forced onto her, and that had ultimately led her to rebel against heaven?

Was this what she really wanted to do?

Was it really right to let the victor destroy the entire world without getting any clear answers to these questions?

If the world really ended now…

If Coronzon herself wasn’t sure if she would gain anything from her victory…

Then how could the humans accept their impending deaths!?

(Someone…)

Kamijou’s throat was dry as a bone.

Maybe even the mucous membranes inside his body had been scorched.

(I don’t care who.)

Even so.

What could he do?

It could be anything, he just didn’t want to give up.

He forced his throat to move as if peeling it apart.

And still collapsed, the boy only had one thing to say. As if in prayer.

“…………H…………e…………l…………p…………”

===Part 6===

“You got it.” “You got it.”

===Part 7===

It sounded like a song.

The lovely girl’s voice controlled everything.

“ATOA. JOEAGTTA.(Alter target of Adikalika. Jump over Europe and go to the Atlantic.)”

And…

“What…?”

Great Demon Coronzon turned her gaze aside.

She knew Adikalika had ''activated''.

It had been launched.

But she didn’t understand.

Why hadn’t she sensed the result?

Her eyes widened past the limit and viewed someplace other than here before groaning.

“It was released. The Adikalika large-scale attack spell was launched… So why isn’t the Italian Peninsula submerged in a sea of blood, flesh, and bone!?”

“Because you redirected it yourself. Although it was my Spell Intercept that made you do it.”

The response was calm.

It was a girl’s voice.

“That spell targets a land named by humans and it brings slaughter to everyone there. That means it won’t have any effect if it’s sent somewhere without a name. It was short hair’s idea. She said Japan has a lot of unnamed islands that are only identified with numbers. And other countries do that too.”

“Damn…you.”

“No matter how big the spell, no matter how intricate the preparation, and even if it is carried out by a higher being far greater than humans…magic is still magic. The spells of angels and demons are based on the same foundation, but did it never occur to you that they could therefore be obstructed by humans?”

“You mean the filthy tongue of a mere human was violating my mind!?”

Coronzon raged, spread her wings wide, and began to yell, but she was forced to fall back a few steps.

Because of something flying in at three times the speed of sound.

With a “boom!!!”, the air was fiercely compressed a moment later.

After catching the projectile in her palm, she could tell what it was. It was half melted, but that was an ordinary arcade coin.

“Oh? Well, that’s unusual. I’ve seen a few people send it back with their reflection, gravity, or some other cheap ability…but I never thought I’d see an idiot catch it with pure brute strength. Oh, wait. Those Magic God people could do that, couldn’t they?”

“Damn you… Damn you both…”

Coronzon growled the words like a deadly curse.

As if the repetition would build up her resentment.

The “zap!!” of a high-voltage current burst out.

Hamazura Shiage had tried something and received a lightning spear, sending him down onto the red snow.

Now Coronzon really was alone.

She had begun this plan alone, but for some reason she now felt a hole in her heart. And not a small one either.

And.

The pillar of light was gone.

The Adikalika large-scale attack spell had been launched, but only launched.

Not a single person had died.

This miracle had not been brought about by Kamijou Touma.

But this was clearly the result that loser had asked for.

“Alice Anotherbible and Anna Sprengel never made it here. Yet you outsiders did? It doesn’t add up. If you could just walk here, they wouldn’t have used parachutes!!”

Coronzon began ranting, but she soon stopped.

Her accumulation of resentment had ceased.

She was empty.

No, she had realized there was a precedent.

Hadn’t Anna Kingsford done something similar in hell?

And hadn’t ''the other Anna'' been here?

In other words…

“No, it isn’t just that those two never arrived. Did they intentionally ''give up'' their spots!? To ensure these two could reach the center!? Did they use magical tricks to let them pass straight through the invisible labyrinth without my noticing!?”

No voice answered her.

Instead, the two girls took a step toward Coronzon.

Straight toward her.

“Do you really have time for that? Unlike Touma, you don’t have anyone coming to save you.”

“I don’t know what any of this great demon stuff is about, but I hope you don’t think you can hurt my idiot this badly and get away with it.”

Index of the magical world.

Misaka Mikoto of the scientific world.

Those two girls had heard a certain boy’s cry.

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2025-08-17T02:11:45Z

Churronzon: Illustrations

==Novel Illustrations==
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2025-08-17T02:07:26Z

Churronzon: B/W illustrations

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2025-08-17T02:06:41Z

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2025-08-17T01:45:18Z

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item4

2025-08-14T04:51:16Z

Churronzon: new page

==Opening==
{{:Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item4 Prologue}}
{{:Toaru Majutsu no Index:Item4 Chapter1}}
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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume13 Chapter1

2025-08-11T04:51:57Z

Churronzon: Removed duplicate word

==Chapter 1: A Change – Magician, Witch, Wizard, and…==

===Part 1===

Suddenly.

Something caused the sound of the cold rain to vanish.

Only nothingness remained.

The air temperature must have fallen below freezing. A red – strangely red – snow fell from the leaden sky.

“…”

Kamijou Touma didn’t bother mentioning it.

If he shifted his gaze away from dead ahead for even a split second, Great Demon Coronzon would use that instant to kill him. He was certain of it.

Kamijou, Alice Anotherbible, Great Demon Coronzon, and Vidhatri lying limp and passed out by his side.

He couldn’t see a single positive element to this.

In that silent world, the “kathunk, kathunk” of a subway train passing by sounded deafening loud.

“What’s the matter, human?” whispered the great demon, slowly spreading her arms and wings.

Her long, long blonde hair tangled around her wings and fingertips like spider web.

“Surely, surely you aren’t planning to thoughtlessly charge right at me? You might still be able to get away. Or maybe if you could use that right hand of yours properly. Kee hee hee. At the very least, falling back would improve your chance of survival over a blind charge.”

“Teacher,” sharply warned Alice Anotherbible. “These are the words of a great demon. They might sound kind, but she would never say anything out of concern for someone.”

Something crackled.

From very close by.

The violently flashing orange light resembled the sparks produced by steel striking steel.

…''Sparks?

“Don’t tell me…”

“Magic usage causes slight fluctuations in this world and the collisions between the unseen overlapping phases produce sparks which can at times be deadly. They are the source of the tragedy that sent Aleister Crowley down his path of carnage. What you see now is the result of my power bringing them down to this lower physical world and giving them form,” explained Coronzon, enjoying herself.

This wasn’t the only thing the great demon could do. She had purposefully chosen this from the near endless cards in her deck.

Kamijou heard another unpleasant sparking sound.

A drum-shaped security robot had burst from within.

It was possible Accelerator was monitoring this from afar and he was using the unmanned machines to search out an escape route through the minefield.

It went without saying what would happen if a human body contacted that…unless it was worse than it seemed.

“The surface-level destruction is a mere trifle. Contact that and you will die. I am not talking about the surface-level shock or destruction. It will ensure your death at the more fundamental level of destiny.”

Yes.

Aleister Crowley had failed to overturn this at his peak, so he had lost his wife and daughter. This was that same tragedy.

“And I have another warning. That third tree? Clonoth, was it? That caught me off guard in the UK and stripped my essence from my physical body, but that will not work again.”

The remaining security robots wavered a little.

“After all, I am not a pure demon anymore. Human Aleister’s symbols have been mixed in with me.”

The great demon curled her lips upward and laughed from deep in her throat.

Aleister.

She looked amused to no end that he was disturbing the human world even after he was gone.

“So what will you do, Kamijou Touma?”

She was a great demon, so she didn’t believe in benevolent coincidences or divine miracles to begin with.

“There are only two options in this world: a merciless death void of miracles, or a false miracle formed by human hands.”

“…”

“I know you know what happens if you stop thinking and pray to god without preparing anything yourself. How severe was the cost of crawling back up out of hell, Kamijou Touma? But all that will be for nothing if you fail to make the smart move here.”

(Well, this could hardly be worse.)

Kamijou felt like he had been abandoned in the middle of a minefield.

He was surrounded in all directions by invisible mines that would kill him on contact. And he didn’t even know how far they were distributed, so he had no sense of how far he had to flee in order to survive.

“Ugh, really? Just for your information…”

Coronzon had set all this up, but she still looked somehow displeased.

Even though she supposedly had an absolute advantage here.

As if the grand surprise she had spent so much effort preparing was going unappreciated, so she had to explain it for him.

“I didn’t just lay these out there. I can move them at will. So that is not a minefield you are standing in – it is a monster’s gaping maw. If I close it, you will be crushed between its jaws. I know you puny humans of this lower world only understand the things you can see, but surely that is enough for you to appreciate your situation.”

In other words, staying still wasn’t enough to save him.

He had been doomed from the beginning.

Kamijou’s right hand contained Imagine Breaker. He might be able to break one or two of the invisible fangs. But would that be enough to defeat the monster? If it ignored the pain and forced its mouth shut, he was dead. It would be over in an instant.

Kamijou clenched his teeth.

…He didn’t stand a chance.

What would he accomplish by charging in recklessly? He had previously fought Great Demon Coronzon in the UK. His right arm and the rest of his body had been smashed right away that time.

Imagine Breaker…''was not enough.

He heard a footstep on metal grating rather than asphalt.

Great Demon Coronzon must have noticed the fear and confusion that hearing that single footstep caused because an amused smile spread across her face.

“Why are you doing this now? We already settled this back in the UK!”

“Why?”

Coronzon snorted.

It grew into full-on mocking laughter.

“Of all things, you’re asking for my purpose and objective!? Kamijou Touma, do you want a similar explanation for how you came back to life? You didn’t turn back from hell because you calmly completed the items on a to do list!! You sought life because the state of life is natural for you and you never questioned that idea. It’s no different for me! This is what I have always been!!”

“So you’re really going to bring countless people to tears just because you never had a particular reason to stop!?”

“I have been true to myself no matter what happened.”

She said it so lightly.

Like someone humming the popular song playing on endless loop in a restaurant.

“Natural decomposition – tearing apart all things and returning them to nothing – is my role of dispersion. How could I trust in myself if I was one thing one day and another thing another day? You puny beings seem capable of that, but perhaps it is the result of your excess of free will.”

“…”

“It was that side of you that ended up tormenting Aleister to the bitter end. To be clear, I will be the one to destroy the world, but it was you who opened the box, Kamijou Touma.”

A grin split Coronzon’s face as she said this.

She was finally back in the outside world.

She couldn’t seem to contain her amusement.

“My value is 333 and my meaning is dispersion. I rule over one line on the great tree, yet I induce discord and betrayal to tear apart the bonds between people and obstruct human evolution. Do you really think I am going to stop? Now that I have been freed, of course I am going to work toward that end with every second available to me!!”

“Teacher,” interrupted Alice Anotherbible.

She looked unusually grim.

As if to say her role as a Transcendent, essentially a part in divine school play, were being stripped from her by the alarm ringing from the audience seating.

Was that young-looking girl perceiving something Kamijou couldn’t see?

“You can’t hold a conversation with Great Demon Coronzon. Not the way you’re doing it anyway. She can’t be won over by what’s right. In her mind, all things falling apart and all people suffering through pandemonium is ''the most healthy and active state for the world''. She only sees your kindness and compassion as a toxin that will cool and solidify the world.”

“!!”

“And she loathes that toxin in her own way. That is why your words can never stop her.”

So did he have to fight?

Countless unseen sparks had been placed around him.

Standing within a monster’s gaping maw was nothing but suicide.

And even if he did escape that, he would only have managed to reach the same playing field as her. Being able to defeat full-power Coronzon was another matter entirely.

He was looking at a battle with a higher being who had easily forced Aleister into submission. He couldn’t imagine how to get started, much less win. Fight or flee, anything he tried seemed like it would only work against him.

But.

“I won’t die…”

Even so, Kamijou Touma’s lips were trembling.

So he forced the words out through clenched teeth.

“I won’t die again!! I was already saved from hell once, so I won’t give up my life so easily!!”

Great Demon Coronzon grinned, but was she mocking how obviously terrified he was or how he had nothing to back up those words.

But in fact, Kamijou Touma did not die.

Because something pierced a straight through that space.

It tore apart the area between Kamijou and Coronzon.

That meant it hadn’t been aimed at Coronzon. Was this clearing a route by intentionally triggering the invisible mines laid out all around him?

(A tear…beam? It can’t be!!)

“Much better. You’ve finally got the right attitude, Kamijou Touma.”

“Ha ha. Boy, did your death put a damper on your hot-bloodedness?”

Nephthys.

And Niang-Niang?

“You mustn’t throw your life away. I see you finally arrived at the simplest answer that no one in the real world seems capable of following, Kamijou Touma.”

“I like this version of you better than your weird recklessness. It’s a lot more reassuring for those of us saving your ass.”

Magic Gods.

They were not a new side to this battle.

They were clearly taking Kamijou’s side and taking up positions to cover him.

Kamijou stared in shock.

Did they just say they were saving him?

From this!?

“Hey, wait. You’re under no obligation to help me out of this mess!!”

They didn’t even bother turning around.

The Magic Gods were facing Great Demon Coronzon in a more casual way, but they were also unwavering.

Even though they had to have a better grasp of the situation than Kamijou.

Yet they still spoke firmly.

“My, my. Have you forgotten that I am Nephthys, a god?”

“And I’m Niang-Niang. How about you let us take over for once? You died and came back, but you didn’t get Magic Godded by it. That means you’re nothing special. Live or die, you’re just a normal human. …And you ordinary people don’t need to deal with creeps like this. The monsters can slay the other monsters.”

Alice held her silence for a while.

But she finally opened her mouth.

“The girl will go with her teacher.”

“Good idea. It’ll be safer if he keeps a trump card with him. To be honest, if softhearted Kamijou Touma escaped on his own, I’d half expect him to be back before long. So go show him to the exit, little miss monster. But if you let him die, I will hunt you down.”

“Hey, quit deciding everything for me!”

Nephthys gave a simple answer to his protest.

“Risking your own skin is all well and good, but if you fall here, then who will bring that girl there to safety?”

Only then did Kamijou remember.

That’s right.

He and Alice weren’t the only ones here.

A Transcendent had collapsed before his eyes while trying to inform Alice of the threat.

Vidhatri.

If she was still alive, he couldn’t just abandon her here. If everyone here tried to fight and were wiped out, there would be no one left to help her. Then she would certainly be killed by Coronzon too.

After reminding him of his responsibility here, Nephthys spoke kindly.

“Make sure she gets away.”

“…Thanks!!”

This was only an excuse, of course. A ritual used to rid Kamijou of his guilt and allow him to act freely.

Nephthys ordinarily acted so irresponsible, but she really did seem godlike here.

“I have a question.”

Someone spoke.

Great Demon Coronzon was smiling.

“What logical reason do I have to let them get away after you held your strategy meeting right in front of me? Not much is more challenging than a retreat when you are at a severe disadvantage!!”

Something new emerged.

This time, it wasn’t even human. It was a golden retriever.

The dog spoke human language.

“Drop straight down!!”

A loud noise followed.

Alice Anotherbible’s small hands had torn up part of the metal grating below their feet. Kamijou, carrying Vidhatri, and Alice didn’t hesitate to jump down onto the roof of the subway train passing through the tunnel below.

An impact.

Continuous shaking. Slipping to the side. But he somehow managed to get a grip on the roof.

He didn’t seem to have hit any of those sparks. They had surrounded him in all directions, but apparently only in two dimensions.

“Looks like we barely escaped with our lives.”

The golden retriever was with them.

What was his name again? Whatever his name, that cute doggy was in fact connected to the infamous Kihara family.

But now wasn’t the time to worry about that.

Kamijou groaned as he adjusted his grip on limp Vidhatri atop the train’s roof. That was all he could manage.

“I went to the trouble of coming back to life…and all I can do is run away? Dammit.”

“Staying alive is an accomplishment in and of itself, if you ask me,” said the dog. “At the very least, you overturned that Coronzon person’s expectations.”

“…”

“Dammit,” cursed Kamijou again. He wasn’t about to give up here.

The train was on the move.

This small seam gave him a new start.

===Part 2===

Kamijou Touma, Alice Anotherbible, and the rest had left.

That left Magic Gods Nephthys and Niang-Niang and Great Demon Coronzon.

The higher beings faced each other as red snow fell around them.

“Oh, right.”

The first to speak was Nephthys, the bandaged beauty with silver hair and brown skin.

“I will be killing you here, but I wanted to ask you something first.”

“I’m not here to fulfill your final request. I’m planning on killing billions after this. I can’t give individuals too much attention. It’s a waste of resources.”

“That isn’t what I meant. Is that human still inside you? Or has he been fully destroyed?”

“Did you think a great demon like me would bother using a pathetic hostage?”

“That still isn’t what I meant. I just want to know if I should feel even a little bad after I kill you.”

She made it sound so simple.

And certain.

The Magic God was not swayed by the great demon title. Just like during their previous battle in the UK.

“To be clear, we will be killing you either way,” said Niang-Niang, hiding her mouth behind her modified China dress’s baggy sleeve.

But she wasn’t smiling.

Not now.

“I know this might sound weird coming from Magic Gods who are willing to die to accomplish our goals, but you really should have let it end after you lost last time. Digging this all back up is just a waste of time.”

A tear spilled from Nephthys’s right eye. An unnaturally large tear.

While she laughed and spoke.

It could be easy to forget since she was too powerful, but battle was not that bandaged beauty’s forte. This was her greatest trait as an Egyptian Magic God.

“I weep for you, Niang-Niang.”

The propagating tear.

In other words, a power boost.

''A Magic God’s already ultimate power was being boosted further by another Magic God.

Boosting, raising, buffing, multiplying – none of those words were sufficient to describe this.

This was on another level entirely from their playtime at the student dorm.

“It’s the same for Aleister and Coronzon.”

“You’ve already tried this a few times, so you could say history has already proven the futility of it. Digging it all back up like this isn’t going to end well for you.”

All expression suddenly vanished from Coronzon.

On her noh mask of a face, words gathered in her mouth.

“These are the intruders who impede natural decomposition. Can false gods who began as no more than human never progress beyond this point?”

“Huh?”

“Not that it matters,” muttered Coronzon, already back to herself.

She did not answer Niang-Niang’s question.

What Coronzon did say was simple.

“By the way, how much did you hear? Having to explain it all over and over again is a pain, so I’d like to skip what I can.”

“You expect understanding from gods? And really, what right does a demon have to judge us? We’re the ones testing you, dumbass.”

“I see. So you understand none of it. Then I will keep it simple, so even your single brain cell can comprehend.”

The crackling of sparks came from around Nephthys and Niang-Niang.

All 360 degrees around them.

“This is not a minefield. It is a gaping maw lined with countless fangs.”

===Part 3===

Still being atop the subway train when it pulled into a station would probably cause a panic and they would get in trouble for riding without paying. The train happened to stop before the next station because one of the signals indicated some minor trouble, so Kamijou’s group took that chance to climb down from the roof. It seemed lucky…but with Kamijou Touma that wasn’t an option. It was the result of how badly damaged Academy City was.

Climbing down from the roof was a challenge when carrying someone unconscious. Kamijou was walking it to the end of the tunnel with Vidhatri on his back when the golden retriever asked a question. That the dog spoke human language went without saying at this point.

“Where are you headed?”

“Phew. District 12. The old Bridge Builders Cabal consulate.”

He couldn’t let Great Demon Coronzon kill him. But what could he actually do? She had only been defeated last time at the end of a battle that dragged the entire world into it. Would he have to go through that again? Academy City was already damaged and repairs were slow in coming, so a battle on that scale could easily reduce the entire city to a pile of rubble.

An emergency exit led to a narrow stairway up to the surface. The creepy but bewitching red snow continued to fall. But his breath was white like normal. While viewing the strange scene, Kamijou pulled his phone from his pocket with Vidhatri still on his back.

It was 4 PM, the weather was snowy, and the temperature was -3 degrees.

(It’s no use. I don’t know who would be safe to contact.)

He had a communication device, but he was hesitant to use it. Because he was still officially considered dead. Contacting a classmate or friend would only cause a panic and ordinary Anti-Skill was out of the question. He had only just escaped those Bio Secure people chasing after him with flamethrowers. Not much time had passed at all.

“Teacher, let’s get to the consulate. You can think and call someone after getting some rest.”

“Good point…”

Yes, the consulate.

He wanted time to calm down and think. He couldn’t even come up with any ideas right now. The appearance of Great Demon Coronzon had radically changed things, but he still needed to get to the Bridge Builders Cabal consulate in District 12.

His breath was white.

And that wasn’t all.

“By the way, what is this red snow?”

That had been bugging him.

It didn’t seem to be something Coronzon had done. He reached out just his right hand with Vidhatri supported with his left arm and let some land on his fingertip, but the ice crystal only melted into a drop of water like normal. There was no sign of anything being negated. In that case, had some strange impurity in the air gotten mixed in when the ice crystal was solidifying? He had heard of things like smog and yellow sand changing the color of snow. Maybe it was related to the gas and dust caused by the shells and explosives used in all the recent large-scale battles.

When the snow melted on his fingertip, the resultant drop was clear. So it didn’t seem like blood or some other red liquid had frozen into snow. That was another point toward his theory it was an impurity in the crystal.

…In that case, as bewitching as the red snow looked, it might not be very clean. What did the color red represent? And aside from that, this was city snow which would be full of exhaust.

“Alice, don’t eat the snow.”

“Ehhh!?”

“Why is that so shocking!? There are plenty of other good things to eat!”

“Ugh, fine.”

“You either, doggy.”

“I would hope you could expect a little more intelligence and romance from me.”

At any rate, walking out in the open didn’t seem like a good idea. Kamijou was known as a walking corpse and carrying limp Vidhatri on his back made him look he was committing some kind of crime. Not to mention the little girl and the large dog not on a leash. Their party was practically asking to be taken in for questioning.

“Uh, oh…”

Someone was dancing on the street up ahead.

She looked to be…middle school aged, maybe?

She had a small collapsible umbrella to keep the red snow off of her and her phone was propped up against the edge of a shrubbery, so she must have thought the unusual weather was an opportunity of some kind.

Was it late enough for school to be out already?

Then again, it was the first day back after winter break, so maybe most schools were only having half days.

(I don’t even know when school lets out anymore. I’m drifting further and further from a peaceful life…)

That was a life-or-death problem. For a high schooler anyway.

Snow was accumulating and it wasn’t Christmas. Maybe there just wasn’t much traffic and maybe all the confusion had prevented the snow from being cleared, but the streets were starting to be covered by the red snow and even the trains were having to stop fairly frequently but irregularly. Not many people would want to head out on a day like this, but as someone who was officially dead, Kamijou still wanted to do his best to avoid being seen. That meant avoiding the person jumping and dancing on the sidewalk with no concern for her short skirt and even walking to the center of a big intersection and slowly turning in a full circle to get a 360-degree shot. The cheerful girl’s extrovert energy pushed Kamijou Touma away, forcing him into the narrow side streets. As the kind of person who preferred to take the far corner seat on the train even when no one else was aboard, he really didn’t mind all that much. Although he was somewhat disgusted with himself for how little it bothered him.

“I really don’t want to make a habit of taking my walks in the shadows.”

“It’s not so bad. Do it enough and it stops feeling weird.”

The dog’s advice did not help improve his mood.

He wanted to do something about it before he reached that point.

But while he was choosing the more deserted paths, it was still midday on a weekday. And he was carrying an unconscious girl on his back, but no one was stopping him. Was ordinary Anti-Skill not functioning well? That was fine as long as no one realized the gravity of it, but this could get bad if some devious people took notice.

Their destination was District 12. It was the most religious district and located on the east side of the city.

They had to take a wide detour around District 23 since it was generally off limits, so it ended up a long walk.

“Phew.”

A lot of time had passed by the time they arrived. It was just past 5 PM or thereabouts. In January, the sun would have been setting at this time, but the clouds were blocking it today.

They had arrived at the familiar consulate…sort of.

It was unrecognizable.

It seemed to have collapsed even more than when Kamijou had seen it last. Had a stray shot hit it at some point?

Several of the spires had broken and the garden was covered in rubble and black soil with a dusting of red snow starting to cover it. Over half of a building larger than the average school had been squashed. From the looks of it, the rainwater had to be getting in. Not many rooms would still be usable, but having a roof above your head still meant a lot.

“May I come in?” he asked Alice without thinking.

That made her squeal with delight. Because he was still treating this as her house maybe?

But…

“I-it’s chilly in here…”

Kamijou shivered. It had to have been colder outside, but he felt it all the worse once he was inside. Maybe his senses were returning to him.

A sofa in the corner of the huge lobby was so fancy he wasn’t sure if it was meant to be used or just decorative, but he lay Vidhatri on it regardless. Even that was difficult with the weird doll attached back-to-back with her. How did you remove it? And he felt like the cold was getting even worse. No, could it be he had been receiving warmth from the brown beauty on his back? Talk about a spoiled way to make use of a young woman. As unscientific as it was, he was afraid he had earned some kind of divine punishment there.

They had somehow arrived at the consulate, but now he had to figure out what to do next.

“F-for now, we need to do something about injured Vidhatri. She still hasn’t woken up, but is she okay? If it requires more than a first-aid kit, then we’re out of luck.”

His first thought was the frog-faced doctor.

Yes, a doctor.

“…”

The main goal of his original plan was to prevent Academy City from pursuing him as the living dead. So by escaping to a consulate belonging to another country(?) where the adults couldn’t touch him, he had hoped to buy enough time to call the frog-faced doctor to him and receive professional confirmation that Kamijou Touma was still alive. And with his status as alive confirmed, he would automatically be preserving Index and Othinus’s home too.

He didn’t know if that Condro-whatever country still officially recognized the consulate, but the actual international effectiveness didn’t really matter. He only needed the powerful adults in Academy City to hesitate.

But Great Demon Coronzon’s appearance had destroyed that plan. Utterly.

To be blunt, she wouldn’t care at all about the consulate. If she didn’t like Kamijou’s group, she would march right in to kill them. After all, she was willing to declare herself one who tore apart human bonds and obstructed their evolution. On a larger scale, there was a real possibility of her ''doing something to Academy City as a whole.'' If it came to that, then Kamijou’s group would be killed along with the rest of the city.

(Seriously, what are we supposed to do? However we stop Coronzon, I do still want to prove I’m alive so I can move through the city more easily…but do I have time for a detour like that?)

What was Index doing right now? Othinus and the calico cat too. It was below freezing outside. He couldn’t leave them out there in the frigid air and red snow and there was always the horrific chance that they would happen across Coronzon out there.

“I guess we can’t just come to a stop. We need to decide on where to start…”

Just as he said that, he heard a weird clattering noise from overhead.

Was someone there?

“Alice, get behind me.”

“Teacher, you don’t need to worry about that.”

Hm? Alice seemed awfully certain about that.

Nervous Kamijou sensed something off.

It came from his sense of smell.

Was that the familiar scent of some extremely ordinary chemical seasonings?

Then someone emerged from the second floor. The underwear woman with large wings on her back was walking while working at a cup of instant noodles with a silver fork.

“Hm? Boy, wherefore are you here?”

She was the Bologna Succubus, one of the Transcendents.

===Part 4===

For Kamijou the Bridge Builders Cabal consulate had seemed like a secret base of evil, but for the Bologna Succubus it was a temporary home in a foreign country. Even if it was falling apart, maybe it was best to just return here.

Kamijou tilted his head.

“What are you normal Transcendents doing now?”

“Normal? That’s a new one, boy. Then again, maybe it was inevitable when you’ve been hanging out with ultra extraordinary Alice so much.”

Standing still, the blonde underwear woman gave him an exasperated look while eating her Japanese cup noodles. Maybe it came from being Western, but he didn’t hear any slurping sounds as she ate the noodles.

“Horrifying. You might as well be eating a cup full of salt,” said the golden retriever.

“Well, this pup feels right out of a fairy tale. The best medicine when you’re tired, if you ask me.”

The tragic state of her diet suggested Good, Old Mary and H. T. Trismegistus were not here since the former was proud of her cooking skills and the latter was picky about manners. …Then again, Kamijou was more at home with cup noodles that would be ready in 3 minutes and eaten in 5 minutes than he was with a full-course dinner that took more than two hours from appetizer to dessert.

“Around half of us were knocked out trying to restrain Aleister when he suddenly went nuts. Vidhatri there was one of them. But we scattered afterwards. After all, our grand plan of saving the world with a resurrected CRC didn’t pan out. And organizations are fragile when they lose their central pillar.”

“Aleister did it?” asked Kamijou because he had thought Coronzon was responsible.

The Bologna Succubus sighed softly.

“There’s something wrong with him. No ordinary human should be able to defeat a group of Transcendents. Maybe that’s just ''the'' Crowley living up to his reputation as the exception among exceptions.”

“''Wait.''”

Kamijou called for a time out.

Something wasn’t right.

“If Aleister alone could have solved the Transcendent problem with Anna Sprengel and such, he wouldn’t have relied on Kingsford in the first place.”

“You have a point,” said the golden retriever. “Thinking back, that preserved corpse was an odd choice for Aleister. It isn’t like him to so wholly rely on someone else like that.”

“This talk of corpses is hitting home a lot more than it did before… But anyway, it sounded like he found some dangerous thing, modified it, and forced it to move.”

“Boy, did you forget?” The Bologna Succubus sounded exasperated. “Aleister is no ordinary human. He has crossed a line much like we have. No, it felt more like he was wielding Great Demon Coronzon’s power.”

“…”

“I doubt he could use all that power to begin with, so maybe something caused him to lose control and break through the limiter?”

“Something? Like what?”

“Kamijou Touma’s death and everything related to Anna Kingsford. You can’t tell me you’ve forgotten about that.”

In other words.

Did it all go back to that?

Just gathering up and using that power was enough to defeat a group of Transcendents. Then what could Great Demon Coronzon herself do now that she was back in control?

The Bologna Succubus shrugged.

“The Bridge Builders Cabal is no longer functioning as a magic cabal.”

“I see…”

“I don’t even know what happened to the other members. Some may still be hiding in Academy City, but I bet most of the Transcendents are leaving now that their reason for being here is gone.”

“…”

Is that why the Bologna Succubus was referring to him as “boy” here?

Alice Anotherbible was no longer her top priority.

In that school on that night, they had seen their pitiful master accidentally kill Kamijou Touma and lose sight of herself. The regular Transcendents must have been disillusioned when Alice didn’t even give them a glance after they served her so thoroughly.

Alice Anotherbible had lost her violent charisma.

And what happened when they also learned that summoning CRC to save the world was nothing more than a pipe dream?

“Nothing but hardtack to eat is murdering my mouth☆ Hey, lewd succubus, was there any canned food anywhere? …What’re they doing here?”

Someone else descended from the second floor.

To her, Alice Anotherbible was just one member of a “they”.

Who was this girl anyway? Kamijou was pretty sure he had never seen her before. The blonde was fully covered by what might have been a copper blast-resistant suit or might have been an iron maiden.

The two began conversing without any kind of introductions.

“We have an injury to deal with, so we’ll have to do something about Vidhatri. Ugh, it’s so inconvenient without Good, Old Mary around. Why does Blodeuwedd the Bouquet have to be the only one left? She’s useless.”

“Kyahah. That’s a neat trick if standing around complaining will heal her wounds. But if not, then we’ll have to figure something out with the people we’ve got, whore demon.”

…The strained atmosphere between those two bothered Kamijou, but it was they who brought a first-aid kit from deeper in the building.

The two Transcendents opened the kit and argued as they opened the manual contained in a waterproof package along with the medicines and bandages.

“First, we need to make sure we use this stuff right☆ Start by disinfecting the wound with alcohol.”

“Don’t be stupid. You need to wash the wound with water first and then disinfect it.”

“This swelling is a bruise, not internal bleeding. That means a compress will do.”

“That’s a hot compress. Are you trying to exacerbate the symptoms? You need a cool compress here, trash.”

“That idiot can be safely ignored. Now, let’s see☆ I need to tie the bandage tight to stop the bleeding.”

“If you want the bleeding to stop fast, you have to let the air contact it. Tying the bandage loose to let it breathe is best, dung beetle girl.”

Left all alone on the sofa, Vidhatri began moaning in her sleep.

Those two were practically at each other’s throats.

The Bologna Succubus and…Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was it? Those two were in fact literally butting heads. Which begged the question of why they were staying here together.

“They must be good friends.”

“Huh?” “Huh?”

Kamijou’s comment earned him a pair of fairly serious glares. A girl’s “huh?” was a frightening thing.

Kamijou couldn’t say which of their claims were correct. He secretly did some searching on his phone and found plenty of agreement in either direction. It was funny that too many opinions could be a problem too. He decided to just assume a Transcendent’s body would be tough enough to endure whatever those two did. Or wait…were Transcendents’ bodies tough?

“Damn, I really shouldn’t have stayed in Academy City. I know I have a habit of sticking around in unloved places, but I always regret not getting out sooner than I do☆”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet was complaining under her breath and Kamijou concluded this really was his first time seeing her.

And the Bologna Succubus was generally welcoming and cheerful no matter what, so it was unusual to see her detest someone so much. She didn’t seem like a bad person to Kamijou, so what made the Bologna Succubus dislike her to this extent?

He asked and the Bologna Succubus reacted with complete exasperation.

In fact, she held a hand to her forehead.

“Boy, um…you are a hopelessly bad judge of character. It’s like you go out of your way to be tricked so you can destroy it all.”

“Oh, c’mon. Ha ha. An ‘evil plot’ by a little girl like this could only be something adora-”

“She was one of the Killers who wanted to murder you in order to control Alice.”

Apparently this was much more serious than he had thought.

…And yet the girl herself held a hand to her cheek while staring at him.

Hm? This seemed quite different from what he had been told. Was that a spellbound look?

“But…now that I’ve met him for myself, he’s nothing like I was expecting. I was imagining an easy-going piece of shit who, y’know, carelessly presses fire alarms and blows up fire extinguishers. But instead he’s more like, well, the shunned and ostracized kid who sits alone in a corner of the classroom. Ahh☆ I, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, am the Transcendent who protects the unloved. And the negative aura coming off of him is more than enough. Pant, pant. Oh, I can’t stand it. Kyahah, unloved one, leap into my arms!!”

“I’d rather not be accepted for ''that'' reason!!”

Was she the type to insult people when trying to be kind!? Kamijou bristled and yelled at the skinny girl whose thick armor opened like double doors. And was she entirely naked except for an apron under there!?

The naked apron was real!!

The depressed aura coming from Kamijou was probably the result of dying, coming back from the dead, being treated as a zombie, being rejected by Aleister for baffling reasons, and then having the resurrected Great Demon Coronzon try to kill him. If he let himself be taken into that soothing shelter, he just knew he would never again be able to leave that sweet-smelling girl’s thick coat!!

(But on the other hand…)

He had died and come back and was now being viewed as a zombie. It was nice finding some people who would ignore all that and actually listen to him.

Great Demon Coronzon.

He couldn’t just ignore that threat, but he needed far more fighters than this to deal with her. He didn’t even know what had happened to Magic Gods Nephthys and Niang-Niang after he left.

Even they had said they would “take over” for him, not that they would defeat her or solve the problem. It had seemed like the Magic Gods were choosing their words carefully.

He didn’t know how that had turned out, but it hadn’t seemed like leaving it with them was the end of it. And if they hadn’t ended it, then he had to assume the Coronzon problem persisted.

The Bologna Succubus put a hand on her hip and spoke.

“Anyway, we’ll treat Vidhatri. We’ll need to take her to another room.”

“I’ll help,” said Kamijou.

“This will mean removing her clothing, so you stay away. As the resident expert on sexiness, I cannot condone non-consensual nudity.”

When put that way, there was nothing Kamijou Touma-chan could do.

“Don’t look so dejected. I’ll let you see me naked later.”

“Could you not make this so awkward to agree with!?”

“Don’t worry. Even if everyone else treats you like a filthy insect, I will be there to hug you☆”

“I don’t like the sound of that future either!!”

The Bologna Succubus and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet began a friendly(?) argument as they moved Vidhatri to another room

Then the golden retriever made a request in a very dandy voice.

“As a dog whose body requires several nutrients to continue functioning, I would really like to be fed soon.”

Had he not eaten?

But this consulate wasn’t Kamijou’s home. He was reluctant to start searching around for food without permission.

He looked to Alice and she only smiled up at him. Apparently this was fine.

He began searching of the half-destroyed building.

“Come to think of it…I don’t remember seeing a dog last time I was here. I don’t think they have any actual pet food.”

“Such an uncivilized place. But it is what it is. Are there any chicken tenderloins?”

“The premade ones are already seasoned, so won’t they be pretty dangerous? For your kidneys and such? I’ve heard human food has too much sodium for most animals.”

“Of course. Really, only humans are capable of digesting that much salt in daily life. Even the fish swimming the sea show more restraint. Parboil it in water to remove all the excess fat and seasoning. And be thorough.”

As pressing as the situation was, having some work to do helped him calm down.

Or maybe that was just his body being heated by the steam coming from the pot of boiling water on the induction cooker. It wasn’t warming him all that much in this chill, though.

How much could a dog that size eat? He decided to just pile up the boiled tenderloins on a plate until the dog himself said it was enough, placed that and a bowl of water on the floor, and asked a question.

“Are you okay in this cold?”

“This is my winter coat, thankfully. And unlike a cat, my coat resists water. Hot!”

The dog couldn’t handle hot foods any better than cats.

Kamijou badly needed to do something about his freezing body. The dog seemed docile enough, but would he get mad if Kamijou hugged him for warmth?

Then Alice walked over and grabbed his hand.

“Over there, over there. You can warm up with that.”

Something rarely seen in Japan was installed in a one of the cracked walls.

Petty bourgeois Kamijou was used to his dorm’s air conditioning, so the idea of starting a roaring fire inside your home was a fairly exciting one, but Alice seemed to find it normal. Was fire not frightening if it had a partitioned area and was well managed?

And Japan did have its irori.

“Just turn the valve and let the gas out!”

“Wait, fireplaces aren’t for burning chopped wood?”

Apparently the firewood was mostly decorative. So many things evolved with time. Even lanterns used LEDs these days, so apparently nothing was safe.

Also, the building was half destroyed, so was the chimney safe? He was afraid it might be broken partway up or have a hole or crack that would change the flow of smoke in devastating ways…

“Damn, staring at a fire calms you down whether you like it or not, huh? No, that’s a dangerous idea. I need to be careful I don’t Little Match Girl myself… Can you not cook fish or dango on skewers in a fireplace? Like you do with an irori?”

“Ohh, nice and warm…”

Kamijou turned around to ask and heard a sleepy voice next to him.

Alice must not have been satisfied without drying every single part of her wet clothing because she stood facing the fireplace fire with her skirt lifted in her hands.

“Stop that! It’s indecent! There’s a boy here. You’re only supposed to let someone you truly care for see inside your skirt!”

“Ehh? Someone the girl truly cares for?”

“No, stop!!”

Don’t turn this way.

Also, she was wearing some kind of white tights, but was it really safe to heat those so close to a fire? Kamijou didn’t know much about old-fashioned materials, but was that something non-synthetic surrounding her legs? He wasn’t certain. He was a little afraid the heat would suddenly melt it, leading to tragedy.

And as they warmed themselves (“Lower your skirt already!”), someone returned from deeper into the building: the Bologna Succubus and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet. They had returned together…which meant they didn’t need to leave anyone with Vidhatri.

“Was the treatment a success?”

“Nyahah, for now.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet gave a brief response to Kamijou’s question.

So they weren’t completely out of the woods there yet.

Kamijou found this drafty building too cold for his liking, but wearing that thick coat indoors must have been too warm. The skinny apron girl occasionally opened it and fanned it to let some heat out as she gave him a skeptical look.

“We have a question for you.”

“?”

“What are your plans concerning Great Demon Coronzon? This situation looks pretty bad, so we kind of have to play the Alice Anotherbible card, don’t we?”

The central pillars of Alice Anotherbible’s violent charisma and CRC’s world salvation had been broken, and yet…

The Transcendents had begun as a gathering of individuals who wanted to protect the kind of people they personally wanted to help. That meant the Bologna Succubus had people she wanted to help and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had her own.

Great Demon Coronzon.

Kamijou had no idea what she might do, but it made sense those two would be concerned about the appearance of someone who would bring harm to anyone and everyone.

And they would be concerned about the enormous bomb that was Alice Anotherbible.

Blowing up over half the world in a fight to protect the world was meaningless.

Those thoughts were written plain on Blodeuwedd the Bouquet’s face.

“It is probably time I decided on a general plan as well.”

The dog was right.

They only had so much time. Doing nothing and avoiding the issue would only be placing the rope around their own necks.

Kamijou organized his thoughts.

And with a deep breath, he spoke.

“I will have Alice fight.”

“Oh,” said Alice, hopping a bit at being brought up in the conversation.

“I had a feeling you would,” said Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, sounding somehow annoyed.

But…

“The problem is she’s too powerful, right? No, I guess the problem isn’t really the size of her power but its instability since you never know where she’ll direct it on a whim. …So we just have to convince the world that ''Alice is a good guy because she’s the one who saved the world.''”

“…”

Kamijou’s explanation caused the skinny apron girl’s sulky look to freeze on her face.

“For real?”

“Great Demon Coronzon is trying to destroy the world. …To be blunt, a threat that over-the-top actually helps us out here. With a half-baked bank robbery or mummy’s curse, we’d be ignored since someone other than Alice could have dealt with it just fine. We need a threat no one else could stop so we can let the entire world know that it was Alice Anotherbible who saved them and that the world would have ended if not for her. Right?”

Fortunately, there was no connection between Great Demon Coronzon and Alice Anotherbible. They both referenced Crowley-style magic, but that wasn’t anything like a personal connection.

That meant it wouldn’t be viewed as the same side splitting between enemy and ally and putting on a show.

“I see,” said the Bologna Succubus, grinning.

She provided criticism and counterarguments as an ally. Like a skilled secretary providing practice before the debate.

“But will it really work out so nicely? Humans are heartless. Once the threat is gone, they might completely forget that someone saved them and start attacking Alice like it’s a demand for disarmament. Because at the end of the day, she’s still a threat for being able to do what she did.”

“I’m aware of that. In that case, we just have to support her. With support from someone who controls the world’s goodness and justice, there won’t be a witch hunt and Alice can become a symbol of victory and peace.”

“Oh? And who did you have in mind?”

“Hey, you’re no diplomat, so stop trying your hand at dangerous diplomatic negotiations, layman.”

A voice suddenly interrupted.

It didn’t come from Kamijou’s phone and the large TV’s LCD screen was badly cracked and broken. It seemed to becoming from the cylinder sitting on the bent table. Kamijou had thought it was a trendy aromatherapy device or something, but…

“The AI speaker is talking on its own!” exclaimed Alice.

Apparently that’s what it was.

Academy City Board Chairman Accelerator.

He had kept silent since the rain turned to red snow, but now he had butted in.

“But how did you…?”

“Consulates that represent a country or region are ordinarily installed with hotlines to the local country.”

He tried to make it sound so obvious, but what did he mean “ordinarily”?

And…

“Academy City, huh?”

The Bologna Succubus sounded surprised.

Apparently she could recognize the massive organization’s leader by his voice. Kamijou was pretty sure the two had never actually met, anyway.

Then the blonde underwear woman winked.

“I thought for sure you were going to go ask the Anglicans.”

“Go to England since this is about magic? I get the idea, but you haven’t forgotten, have you? The original Alice and Aleister Crowley are both from England.”

With that said, Kamijou sighed softly.

Meanwhile, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet seemed to have finally recovered from her freeze.

She pouted her lips and gave her opinion (in a weirdly serious way for a naked apron wearer).

“I see☆ So if Alice’s activities benefited England, it would look too much like it was all a setup?”

“And I doubt we can go to the Roman Catholic or Russian Orthodox Churches. In fact, that would probably end up with the Anglicans claiming original ownership and demanding she be returned to them, so it could just cause further conflict. Really, it will cause the least trouble if we leave Alice with the science side since they know nothing of magic. ''Intentionally ensuring that treasure goes to waste'' will ensure the magic side VIPs don’t get jealous as they watch on from the shadows.”

“How do we know that works?”

“It has with Index, the grimoire library.”

Yes, there was an example very close to home for him.

If the magic side was so afraid of having a specific magician or magic cabal control her, they just had to isolate her in another world where no one could reach her. The same could be said of Alice as well.

Alice had far too much power for an individual and analyzing her body could reveal the open source plans for creating “regular Transcendents”. Handing her over to someone on the magic side who knew how to make use of her sounded far too dangerous no matter who it was.

“Are tenderloins that good?”

“Munch, munch. Alice, these are mine. As a human, you should eat human food.”

“Is the girl still human?”

Talk of the power balance in the world of magic went over Kihara Noukan’s head, so he was busying himself with the big plate of tenderloins on the floor. Or rather, he was fighting for them with Alice who had taken an interest in them.

She definitely needed to be left with someone who didn’t know how to make use of her.

“To sum up, we first need to deal with Coronzon somehow or another. After that, we need to ''make it so that'' credit for saving the world goes to Alice. And lastly, we leave her with Academy City to avoid any further conflict. Its mostly a vague outline with no concrete details, but does that sound like a good overall plan?”

“Hey,” said Accelerator. “You aren’t forgetting that Alice girl is one of the reasons the city is in such a bad state, are you?”

“''The Coronzon problem comes first.''”

“Ugh,” groaned the #1, falling silent.

That was unusual.

“Keep your priorities straight. Coronzon rates higher than Alice,” clearly stated Kamijou. “We don’t have many cards in our deck right now. We can’t afford to lose even one trump card. If we focus on Alice first and end up fighting each other while ignoring Coronzon, whatever it is she’s going to do, Academy City will be destroyed first. If you really want to protect this city, then it’s your job to make sure Alice can fight at full strength, Board Chairman.”

“You make it sound so easy. You don’t think you’re free of responsibility just cause you’re not the guy at the top, do you?”

“And I do think there’s room for leniency with Alice. It’s true the damage was done by her great power, but she had no idea what she was doing and it was everyone else around her who pushed her into doing it. And that includes me. Judge her if you must, but I’m not about to let her face the world’s judgment alone. I sacrificed my life saving her, so I will make sure I save her to the very end.”

“…Tch.”

The board chairman at the very top clicked his tongue for some reason, but he said nothing more.

Kamijou wasn’t sure what part of his argument had hit home.

And then.

He heard a ring as if from a deep bell.

Was that the doorbell?

“…Wait.”

Kamijou tensed.

The only one still relaxed was Alice as she hopped on the sofa.

Meaningless misfortune often paid Kamijou a visit, so he had a very bad feeling about this. In the absolute worst case, this was Great Demon Coronzon ringing the doorbell as a joke.

Kihara Noukan looked up from his plate of tenderloins and spoke quietly.

“I do not know much about that magic stuff, but is there a chance she has detected us here?”

“A big chance. After all, she was sealed inside Aleister all that time. So anything Aleister saw or heard, she would have observed from inside him!”

This was the only real option, but had it been a mistake to choose a known building as a shelter?

Hiding deep in the damaged building and waiting for a chance to strike…would be one option, but this was Coronzon they were talking about. If they didn’t respond, she might not even enter the crumbling building. If she decided to instead blast the entire structure from outside, all of them would die in vain.

So they had to respond.

“Bologna Succubus, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.”

“Yes? Are you giving us the dangerous job since you beat us and we have nothing left to live for?”

“Don’t be dumb. Vidhatri is sleeping in the back, right? I’ll deal with whoever’s at the front door, so you two take her out the back way and escape if it looks bad.”

“…”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet fell silent, looking surprised, and the Bologna Succubus patted her on the shoulder. Except she didn’t release the shoulder of that thick coat and squeezed it with a vise-like grip.

“(I found him first. Try anything and you are dead, you naughty spoiling goddess.)”

“(Ehh, that’s no fun. Well, you have my word, but I can’t guarantee my body won’t act of its own accord when the moment comes☆)”

“(Then your word is worthless!)”

“(Who does this man milker think she is looking down on me? Does this nocturnal lesser demon think she’s his guardian or something!?)”

They started struggling against each other, but Kamijou chose to believe it was a sign of friendship.

He had to go answer the front doorbell.

Kihara Noukan accompanied him.

“Do you have any kind of weapon? With the fireplace, there should at least be a poker.”

“It would only get in the way of my right hand.”

He knew ''reflexively holding out his right hand'' was a dangerous move with anyone at the level of an angel or demon, but he still needed to focus on occult countermeasures. This wasn’t like the battle against Stiyl where they both knew each other’s moves.

Alice joined him too.

And he wasn’t even given time to prepare.

He didn’t even have time to think about opening the front door because the outer wall near the door was broken. And so he saw the answer before he could even get nervous. The hole provided a big spoiler.

“Hi.”

Someone stood there.

Dion Fortune…and two others behind her.

No, he recognized them. Wasn’t that Hamazura Shiage and Takitsubo Rikou?

The group was introduced to him as follows:

“It’s the Anglican Archbishop and her jolly friends.”

===Part 5===

Coronzon had moved location.

She didn’t need to prepare any supplies. Everything she needed was right here in the city. Each individual would use the puzzle pieces differently, but the great demon chose to use them purely for destruction.

Yes.

Destruction.

But that meant she did need control of the necessary locations first.

And so despite being known as a great demon, she was forced to do something she would have preferred not to.

Move.

“Pros can become cons, advantages disadvantages, and strengths weaknesses. Really, Aleister would have loved it.”

But at this point, she couldn’t screw this up.

It wasn’t possible.

She had passed the challenges she could not fully calculate for. That is, she was past the point of gambling. For her, whether or not Aleister would self-destruct and release her had been the greatest obstacle.

Now she just had complete the rest of the job.

The spell she was preparing was on an enormous scale and would take time, but she still swore on her name as a great demon that it would not fail.

No matter what anyone did from here on, it would be ''launched''.

Great Demon Coronzon spoke quietly to herself.

“Time to begin.”

===Part 6===

“Adikalika,” began Dion Fortune, seated on the sofa.

Five seconds after taking a seat, she was already recrossing her legs.

“Great Demon Coronzon is preparing a massive piece of magic in this city. It’s called Adikalika.”

Come to think of it, why were Hamazura and Takitsubo of Academy City working with Dion Fortune of the UK? Maybe Kamijou wasn’t one to talk, but their circle of friends was a bit of a mystery.

However, there was no threat here.

They had moved to the parlor which just was barely still intact. The kitchen was apparently still functional, so Kamijou boiled some water and made some tea. He hadn’t the foggiest idea how to to make proper British tea, but since Fortune happily held the cup between her hands, he figured he had done well enough.

“Ohh, it’s nice and warm!”

“Hot water really helps calm you. I noticed that with my cup noodles earlier.”

It was below freezing outside. With red snow falling.

…So maybe even boiled tap water would have been fine if it warmed her.

Regardless, Dion Fortune got down to business.

About Adikalika.

“Our grimoire library is still being lent out to someone I could mention, but Orsola Aquinas did a brilliant research job. She tracked it down to a booklet packaged with a strange book not even found in London’s national library. Apparently a used bookstore had bought it from a certain Loch Ness mansion.”

Everything since the funeral had left Kamijou starved for human warmth, so he was pleased to hear this mention of someone he knew, but that wasn’t the main point.

So what exactly was this Adi…whatever-it-was? It sounded foreign to Kamijou’s ears, but also didn’t seem English.

Kihara Noukan and Accelerator on the AI speaker seemed pretty smart, but neither of them tried to take charge of the conversation. Were they waiting to have all the information because magic was outside their areas of expertise? Kamijou could think of any number of questions to ask, but he couldn’t narrow it down to just one.

“What is Adikalika?”

Fortune had brought Takitsubo here, but it was she who asked from the sofa with a blank stare and tilt of the head.

Had Fortune not explained it to her own group?

The science side and magic side were so different she must not have expected them to understand right way, so she gave a quick explanation.

“Right, Adikalika. When written in the alphabet instead of the Sanskrit script, it becomes a Crowley term. Originally, I guess you could say it’s a Magick reinterpretation of the Indian goddess Kali as a being who absorbs all things and make them her own. Using the 11th letter – that is, K. So the key to understanding it is Kali.”

“Wait, not so fast,” interrupted Kihara Noukan. “If you assume your audience already understands everything, your explanation is worthless. Simplicity and ease of understanding should be your goal here.”

Kamijou tilted his head.

“Hm? An Indian goddess, huh?”

For Kamijou, the word “goddess” brought to mind a kind and gentle young woman. Uh, oh. Now he was letting himself be influenced by the earlier mention of Orsola! Goddesses weren’t dorm mangers who always wore aprons and carried around brooms!!

And apparently that was way off in this case.

According to Dion Fortune:

“The original Kali is a fairly dangerous god. She started out as a representation of a certain goddess’s fury, so there’s not a hint of kindness found in her. She is a goddess of death and bloodshed and she is openly introduced as a god who has lost her sanity. But instead of a god of death for individuals, she’s more like a god of destruction for nations and the world. Also, destruction itself is not her final goal. One legend says the world was nearly destroyed by the impacts and tremors caused by her dance of joy after defeating her enemies.”

This was sounding bad already.

Hamazura was having trouble keeping up, so he asked a question.

“This is just a case of using a mythological name or symbol for a major project, right?”

“That does happen sometimes. Like with space exploration rockets or submarine missiles.”

Kamijou knew what Hamazura and Kihara Noukan were trying to say.

He decided to take over for them. …Even though he wasn’t exactly a magic expert himself.

“This spell is simply borrowing that goddess’s name, right? …Right? Surely you’re not going to say that goddess herself is going to be physically summoned here.”

That idea sounded absurd, but the Bologna Succubus and Blodeuwedd the Bouquet were right over there. The two of them were fighting over a variety pack of cookies that had been left in the consulate. The pack had six different kinds of cookies, but they were both only interested in the chocolate chip ones.

Yes, there were people here with names taken from myth.

After seeing the Magic Gods and Transcendents, Kamijou couldn’t just laugh this off. Vidhatri sleeping in the back had an Indian-sounding name, so anyone familiar with those myths would probably recognize her name. Plus, the Dion Fortune in front of him now wasn’t the real one – she had been created with a magical trick.

“It’s not that bad, but the end result isn’t much better.”

Kamijou felt like he had been trying to hold the conversation back when it suddenly slipped out of his hands entirely.

“As a spell, Adikalika sends the goddess of death and bloodshed to the caster’s chosen coordinates in the world,” continued Dion Fortune. “Specifically, the spell takes the catastrophic destruction that the four-armed black goddess would likely bring and transfers it to a specific land. Only the people in that chosen territory can know what happens there, but I can guarantee you that they will all die. Just assume that it’s all over if the spell is activated.”

The world, catastrophic destruction, chosen territory, all die…

This was sounding worse and worse, but this wasn’t quite enough to picture it. Among the mixture of people from different factions, Kamijou, Hamazura, and Takitsubo had the exact same distinctive look on their faces.

Dion Fortune noticed the way Kamijou was looking at her.

“If you want a description that’s easier for your science brains to understand, I guess you could think of it like an ICBM loaded with a really dangerous poison gas or germ. …But with Adikalika, it cannot be blown up after it is launched. And once it hits, all life within the land assigned the chosen human name will die. It is predicted that ''the people will be reduced to a mass of blood, flesh, and bone. That is, they will be crushed and sliced into what looks like a giant hunk of gore while still alive.''”

That was even more gruesome than expected.

Of course, it was always going to be bad if Great Demon Coronzon felt it was worth the time and effort to use. But still.

At this point, Accelerator spoke through the AI speaker, keeping his voice low.

“What does Coronzon hope to do with that thing?”

“Hm? Isn’t she going to attack Academy City with it?”

Takitsubo answered his question with a question.

Was that really the answer, though?

Attacking Academy City sounded straightforward at first, but it felt wrong somehow. For one, she was in the city. If the spell was that destructive, she wouldn’t want to be caught in the destruction herself.

Dion Fortune recrossed her legs on the sofa and responded.

“I bet she has a different target.”

“?”

“I said the target was defined by a name assigned by humans, remember? To be blunt, the global Achilles heel she’s aiming for will probably be related to the Anglican Church or the Roman Catholic Church.”

“They are both foundations of the vast magic side☆” added Blodeuwedd the Bouquet with a cackle.

It sounded like even the Transcendents saw it that way. Now, anyway. Not long ago, they had acted like they were the center of the world.

Dion Fortune nodded and then said more.

“But I expect she’ll choose the headquarters of the Catholics in the end. So the Vatican…no, she’ll probably expand the scope to the entire Italian Peninsula.”

Kamijou had a question.

“But why? Wouldn’t she have a grudge against the UK?”

“I imagine she does. But she can’t attack us.”

Dion Fortune didn’t hesitate there.

But not because she was optimistic.

She had a bitter grimace on her face. As if to say the problem would be a lot smaller if the UK would just be chosen as the target.

“I mean, if she could use that against us, she would have done so last time. …If you follow her actions then, she attacked Board Chairman Aleister in Academy City before returning to Britain, stealing a treasure in Scotland, and attempting a major spell. If she could have launched Adikalika from Academy City and turned the entire United Kingdom into a sea of blood and mincemeat, she would have done so already. But that wasn’t what happened.”

Feeling a chill down the spine here may have been the natural human reaction, but it was also a meaningless reaction.

They had to focus on constructive topics, not the past. Even if they had to force their thoughts in that direction.

Then ''why didn’t it happen that way''?

Dion Fortune sighed.

“Crowley is a British magician. Ignoring his work could damage the UK’s reputation, so they put in a lot of work analyzing his spells.”

The Bologna Succubus commented while munching on the edge of a chocolate chip cookie (that she had swiped at the end of a battle of scratching nails with Blodeuwedd the Bouquet).

“I see. So do you have some kind of powerful resistance against Crowley-style magic, including Adikalika?”

“Right. At the very least, for the spells he created before his official death in 1947. …That’s why Coronzon tried to use a royal treasure to destroy the UK from within last time.”

“But the Roman Catholics are a different story?” asked Kamijou.

Dion Fortune shrugged.

“When it comes to Crowley, Italy had the huge bomb that was the Abbey of Thelema. But it sounds like Italy threw everything out of the country – including documents and spiritual items – when they ordered Crowley to leave.”

So If the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church had no Crowley resistance, would they have no way of preventing this attack from turning the entire country into a sea of blood, flesh, and bone?

And if that happened…

Takitsubo slowly blinked before asking a question.

“I’m not familiar with the different powers of the, um, magic…side? What happens in the worst case?”

“If nothing is done and this plays out to the end, Adikalika will first trigger all-out war between the magic side and science side. Because Academy City could have stopped it, but Great Demon Coronzon is a being who can only be explained by the magic side.”

“I see, I see. So even though Academy City wasn’t involved in the attack, the magic side will still blame them for not stopping Coronzon. But Academy City will fire back, saying Coronzon is from the magic side. Both sides will have a point, so there will be no end to the argument.”

When the Bologna Succubus spoke up, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet apparently felt a need to so a well.

Because they were rivals, or because they were friends?

“The Roman Catholic Church has 2 billion followers, right? Even with all of Academy City’s unmanned weapons, how much can its 2.3 million people do with the city so exhausted?☆”

“…”

And what good was defeating those 2 billion anyway?

The point wasn’t to pit humans against each other to create an even bigger ocean of blood and dye the entire earth red like one big disturbing candy apple.

Would the world really let a single demon drive them that far over the edge?

“And despite being part of the magic side, the Roman Catholics will attack the Anglicans too. Because Crowley is a British magician. Not to mention how closely connected England and Academy City have been. And if the UK does have anti-Crowley tech, the Catholics would want it.”

Takitsubo cut in here.

“We’re talking about war, right? Could they really choose to fight on two fronts like that?”

“As we said, the problem with a war where both sides have a point is it’s hard for either side to stop.”

Things were reaching a large scale here.

But Kamijou knew the same had happened with World War Three, Gremlin, the Crowley’s Hazards, and R&C Occultics.

The global balance was a perilous thing, so even a small trigger could lead to an age of global war.

Great Demon Coronzon herself had said that she was a being who tore apart people’s bonds and obstructed human evolution. And that her method of doing that was the natural decomposition of her dispersion.

That meant Coronzon was intentionally trying to trigger a war like that. It was not a deterrent, a necessary cost, or a single step in some master plan. The war and chaos itself was her goal. The Adikalika spell was no more than the trigger for that.

…They had to stop something like that from happening ''again''.

This was no longer just about Academy City.

Kamijou wanted to know more details. He wanted as broad and deep an understanding as he could get.

“How long does this Adikalika spell take to prepare?”

“By my estimate, the world will be headed toward its doom by midnight tonight. Assuming we don’t do anything to stop it.”

Midnight.

“But that’s a fairly optimistic estimate.”

So there was a chance it could end before then.

It was nearly 6 PM.

They had less than 7 hours remaining. The beginning of disaster was imminent.

“She’s moving awfully fast,” groaned Kihara Noukan. “This Coronzon person has only been in control for less than two hours, right? I don’t see how she could have made any large-scale preparations for this.”

“She doesn’t need any. How long was she sealed inside Aleister? I bet she’s been making full use of her great demon mind that entire time, running simulation after simulation. And as a fellow Golden magician, it was obvious at a glance that Academy City is littered with pieces of Crowley’s legacy. This isn’t like a poison gas weapon she has to smuggle into the country or a nuclear bomb she has to manufacture. She’s surrounded by items she can use.”

“Oh? So to look at it in reverse…”

“I like the way you think, golden retriever. Yes, Adikalika can only be readied inside Academy City. You can think of it as an issue of feng shui or the terrain if you want.”

Even so…

(Aleister, huh?)

What had become of him?

Was he trapped inside that body with Coronzon in control now, or had he been annihilated when she emerged? Kamijou still didn’t know.

At the very least, he knew Aleister, the man who had grieved for the people he lost, was human. For better and for worse. On an instinctual level, he wouldn’t want to construct this Adikalika spell and destroy the world with it.

That human had lost his family and, due to that one factor, decided to declare war on the Golden magic cabal.

At his peak, that human would have been on the side trying to stop this.

No matter how much he would probably deny it.

“…”

Kamijou had Imagine Breaker in his right hand.

Its ability to negate any supernatural ability should be able to stop Coronzon’s Adikalika. However, relying on ''that alone'' would be suicide. For one, he couldn’t win a one-on-one fight against Coronzon, so even approaching the core of her plan would be a challenge.

Imagine Breaker was important, but it wasn’t enough.

“W-we do have a trump card, don’t we?”

This came from Hamazura.

He might seem far removed from magic, but he apparently had an idea.

“Dion Fortune’s…whatever it’s called. That black box!”

“Oh… I really wouldn’t recommend using the Archetype Processor here.”

“Why not!? Can’t it…what was it? Eat any magic and then break it apart and…transform it? Into something else? You were ''forced to use it'' in the UK, so I know what it can do!”

This carried a lot of meaning.

Yes.

Great Demon Coronzon was painstakingly constructing some unprecedented magic. This spell was on such a scale that not even she could whip it up in a flash, so it had to be quite complex. …So with Dion Fortune’s black box(?), couldn’t they mess it up and ruin the entire plan?

They could use that.

If they had two trump cards, Coronzon would have to split her focus. Which could create an opening. And more importantly, even if Kamijou’s right hand failed to reach her, it helped immensely to have another trump card available.

But something bothered Kamijou.

That item belonged to Dion Fortune, so why hadn’t she brought it up as an option?

“First of all, don’t expect much from it. My toy isn’t as convenient as your right hand.”

Dion Fortune sighed and raised her index finger. A box the size of a soccer ball twirled atop it. Alice stared at it, wide eyed.

She seemed confident in her control.

So her concern wouldn’t just be whether she succeeded or failed.

“All this thing does is convert an existing spell into ‘an unpredictable form’. That means the magic in front of me doesn’t just disappear.”

“But that’s not nothing,” said Hamazura. “If it can at least stop that world-destroying Adikalika magic, then it’s worth using.”

“''The massive amount of magic power gathered to activate Adikalika will remain untouched.''”

The atmosphere strained.

So would it be like causing a top-of-the-line race car to explode just before the race began?

“After the spell is fully dismantled and converted into something else inside the box, not even I can predict what form it will take when it reemerges into the world. Listen, Hamazura. If we’re unlucky, it could even blow away Academy City. And even if we aren’t unlucky, it could still have a major downside. There is technically a chance it could result in a fantastically lucky phenomenon like burying Academy City in candy, but you’d have better odds of winning the lottery. Are you willing to bet on those odds? When it means putting so many other people’s lives at risk?”

“Uh…”

Hamazura groaned, but Kamijou glanced over at Alice.

Alice Anotherbible might be able to “adjust” the entire structure of the world to ''force a jackpot''…but that would be a whim on her part.

Getting Alice’s help was fine.

But they couldn’t rely entirely on her when they had no other chance of winning. If she failed and was attacked for bringing about the end of the world, it could turn her into a monster again.

“It’s an interim position until the next one is officially chosen, but I am currently the archbishop in charge of the entire Anglican Church. I intend to live up to the trust placed in me. So I am not willing to make a choice that might protect the world but would be like killing 2.3 million people. How about you?”

The rest fell silent.

Kamijou, Hamazura, Takitsubo, Kihara Noukan, the Bologna Succubus, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet, Accelerator, and even Alice.

Their unwillingness to speak meant they were conflicted. They each had two weights: one on the yes side of the scales and one on the no side. It was a matter of extent and size and also proof that none of them was willing to give up on Academy City so readily.

But at the same time, Kamijou had a thought.

…This was probably something she could only say at this point.

If Adikalika’s preparations really were complete and the final seconds were ticking down until the 7 or 8 billion people around the globe were dragged into a massive war, he thought Dion Fortune probably would make the decision. She would choose to force a resolution by putting 2.3 million lives at risk. Because she had said she would live up to the trust placed in her as the archbishop of the Anglican Church which protected the people from wicked magic.

Kamijou breathed in and out.

Stop thinking so negatively. Dion Fortune had said herself she didn’t want to do that. And because the situation was so pressing, he needed to come up with more positive ideas.

“Let’s just think of that as a last resort available just in case. If we try everything else and none of it works, then it’s up to Dion Fortune. If we think of it as a lifeline during this tightrope walk, it should help our mental state.”

“Hey, I said I wasn’t going to-”

“And we’re risking our lives so you won’t have to. That’s why we’re here, right?”

And speaking of having someone to support you, Kamijou Touma recalled his fight against Stiyl Magnus.

“I’m so glad I know the board chairman…”

It helped immensely to have Academy City’s new board chairman on their side. The city wasn’t in the best state, but holding full authority over it changed things considerably from fighting as individuals.

“I doubt it will be that easy.”

But.

It was Dion Fortune who immediately shot down that hope.

“I can only guess, but I bet she’ll be making her move soon.”

===Part 7===

“What?”

Accelerator frowned.

An alarm was buzzing.

This wasn’t just a single window or popup displaying a dangerous error. They were popping up too fast to read. He would have to check the log for that, but that was scrolling by endlessly like a realtime chat.

And the “unknown error” messages weren’t exactly helpful.

He still held the master key that took the form of a smartphone, yet his commands were being rejected. There shouldn’t have been privileges higher than that, but something else was obviously intervening and hijacking control.

This wasn’t anything like hacking or a cyber attack.

No one was breaking in by spoofing their credentials.

He didn’t sense that sort of logic here.

And, of course, these weren’t just unintentional failures or malfunctions.

Which meant…

Was there some command structure entirely separate from the scientific technology?

“I-isn’t this really bad?”

“…”

“This isn’t just the satellites and comms. There’s a chain reaction of malfunctions in the electric, gas, and water systems! It’s January and it’s snowing outside. Who knows how many people will starve or freeze if the pipes freeze and the power stops!!”

Most of Academy City’s food came from agro-buildings and clone meat, but a failure in the RFID-tag-based transportation instructions could create a situation where plenty of ingredients were being produced but none of it could be processed or reach the stores and restaurants. And in fact the bases responsible for that were going down one after another.

“C-could this also be why false alarms keep coming in? Even from the germ lab, the petrochemical plant, and the radiation testing lab… N-n-now there’s no way to tell a real major incident from all the false alarms!”

Were all the automatic reports meant to paralyze Anti-Skill, the firefighters, the hospitals, and everyone else who preserved the peace?

No, this was too roundabout a method for that.

(This is clearly more than just some unfortunate trouble, but the methods are really inconsistent for an intentional attack. It also doesn’t feel like someone acquired the city’s emergency response manual and used that to reverse engineer a method of paralyzing the city.)

He could tell this was an emergency, but that was why he couldn’t act rashly.

“So this isn’t meant as an attack. So is it a side effect of something? But of what?”

As Accelerator glowered into the screen, attempting to grasp the situation, Qliphah Puzzle 545’s shrill voice pierced his ears. She was kind of annoying. …Although that was, in a way, unavoidable when she had been ''designed'' as an agitator meant to create a mood that would lead to war.

“Can’t you artificially stop the rain…no, it’s snow now, isn’t it? Anyway, can’t you change the weather? This snow did start out as artificial rain, didn’t it?”

“Stopping the snow’d be easy, but clear skies would only bring the temperature down further. You’ve heard of radiative cooling, haven’t you? That accumulated snow won’t melt right away.”

And if the temperature dropped, more people would die.

The map of Academy City displayed on a wall monitor was gradually changing color.

Yellow indicated areas where ordinary living would be a challenge. Red indicated areas where survival would be a challenge.

Around half was already marked one or the other.

“So within 72 hours, it’s estimated this many will die? More than 100 thousand?”

In urban life, snow accumulation made travel difficult and isolated households. If the power and water stopped in that situation, people would soon start to die. Before even considering transportation, the city’s food was almost entirely reliant on the agro-buildings and clone meat. They wouldn’t be able to grow much of anything without water or electricity.

To prevent such a situation, Academy City had decentralized its power generation using the wind turbines distributed around the city, but even that was useless if the central facilities controlling the power system went down.

And…

“This estimate is assuming everyone obediently stays home as their told and dies there.”

“…”

“If they start rioting or looting, these calculations don’t mean shit. Then we could see several times as many victims.”

It was said the Japanese were relatively less likely to do such things, but that didn’t mean they would just sit tight at home and wait for death. With their lives on the line, they would try to survive. Accelerator felt that was the natural reaction for any living thing.

But…

(I thought this city was designed to avoid this kind of large-scale infrastructure trouble. I know there’s no such thing as absolute safety, but this number of loopholes feels intentional.)

These times were complicated by the fact that he had inherited the city from someone else instead of building it from the ground up himself. He held the smartphone master key, but he hadn’t designed the structure and layout of every single facility and piece of equipment.

However, the previous board chairman had been Aleister. He had been able to shrug it off every time the dark side took a shot at him, so it seemed unlikely he would leave foolish holes like this unplugged for long.

In fact, with holes this large, wouldn’t some hacker from inside or outside the city have used them to bring down the city already?

In that case…

(These loopholes are no mistake. Someone placed them there on purpose.)

He thought in silence.

But he could only come up with unpleasant ideas.

(But no one except Aleister could make use of them. They use some kind of system that the hackers, crackers, and others who make ''ordinary science'' their plaything couldn’t even imagine.)

The screen suddenly changed.

No, someone had taken control of it. Even here in the board chairman’s headquarters.

The voice that spoke from it was familiar.

“Hello again. Have you started to catch on, Mr. New Board Chairman?”

“…Is this your doing?”

“This is nothing more than a side effect. I am not trying to destroy the infrastructure for everyday necessities. The destruction I am after is on a much larger scale. Then again, seeing peaceful people starving, resenting each other, and beginning a chain reaction of violence could make for an amusing, if unintentional, show. But it is nothing more than a bit of entertainment.”

“You’re only using a backdoor. You haven’t actually taken full control.”

“Give up. It’s a fundamentally different system. You can’t influence the side I’m on no matter how much you type away on your keyboard. Can you keep up with this? Here’s a hint: the science side has no way of explaining the problem plaguing Academy City. Magician Aleister Crowley designed the city that way from the beginning. He took the laws and rules of our magic side and hid them below a veneer of cutting-edge science.”

“…”

Accelerator intentionally remained silent.

So it was Qliphah Puzzle 545 who carelessly opened her mouth and continued the conversation.

“What do you mean…and how far…does it go?”

“How far? Everything. Everything!! For example, the dam in the mountains, the flow of the rivers, and even the culverts hidden below ground! And it isn’t just the water supply either. The railroad lines, the broadcast facilities, the main roads, the highways, and even the layout of the districts!! Which is why I can so easily remove them from your control and place them under mine!!! …This is a city of learning created by Aleister Crowley, so it is nothing more than a rehash of the Abbey of Thelema he once built in Italy in order to drag talent out of young lives by drowning them in the supernatural and drugs!!”

After all that, Coronzon cooled down.

In fact, it was uncertain if she had even really felt all that emotion deep down.

“But none of that matters… Academy City appears to detest me for the chaos I bring, but are you sure that’s a good idea, my enemy? Have you perhaps forgotten something?”

“Like what?”

“That I am no longer your only enemy.”

Coronzon did not use hints and insinuations at this point.

Likely because she knew a direct statement would cause a greater shock and more chaos.

“The world will be split in two. Because Academy City named itself a city of science and the sole representative of one side of the world, the rest of the world had no choice but to categorize itself as the magic side. But now it is coming out that Academy City is chock full of magical symbols. …Do you really think the people forced so unfairly to keep their heads down are going to let that go?”

===Part 8===

They didn’t hesitate.

Kanzaki Kaori, Itsuwa, and the other Anglican magicians had been waiting outside Academy City near the wall, but as soon as they detected ''an unfavorable sign'', they immediately crossed the wall none of them had been able to cross before.

They didn’t even bother masking their footsteps or presences.

The outsiders of the Amakusas and the Former Agnese Forces took the lead and paved the way for the second wave made up of the main Anglican team. It was their usual method.

The total number that crossed the wall in that series of actions exceeded ten thousand.

“Wh-who are you people!?”

When an Anti-Skill officer reacted to the unexpected group in a fluster, Tatemiya Saiji approached and swiftly took control of his consciousness. This meant more than just putting him to sleep on his feet. Tatemiya dragged out every last piece of information the man knew: the names and faces of his colleagues and superiors, the location of crucial facilities, passwords, and so on. Complete brainwashing was too much of a challenge, but searching out information was doable.

Then they only had to repeat the process.

It helped that Academy City was severely shorthanded. Drum-shaped security robots, eight-legged Predator Octopuses, Six Wings attack helicopters, and other unmanned weapons were being used to make up for the lack, but they weren’t much use against the magicians. The magicians passed right by them without being detected.

Perhaps this was the result of England’s long relationship with Academy City.

The Anglicans already had countermeasures ready.

“We Amakusas will head to District 2. The Former Agnese Forces should head first to District 1 and move on to the retrieval job once you finish there.”

“Understood.”

“And take this just in case.”

“A duralumin case? What’s in it? An Anglican-tuned spiritual item would actually be a poor match for us.”

“There are British flags inside. Raise them around the city if you need to reduce the morale of the enemy remnants.”

“What a pain.”

Agnese Sanctis sounded truly annoyed.

She didn’t know whose idea this was, but did they not consider the possibility of it angering the enemy into rebelling?

Then again, her own use of the word “rebelling” may have been a sign of her subconsciously looking down on them. This was their city, so the science side was ostensibly the one in charge.

“So we’re already thinking of Academy City as nothing more than remnants?”

“They did fail to stop us at the wall.”

No matter how much security had been beefed up using science, it was powerless against magic. The magicians could drag out any information someone knew and, if they needed biometrics like a fingerprint or iris scan, they could ''send the approved person trudging over to the scanner'' and get it unlocked that way.

District 1 contained Anti-Skill headquarters and District 2 contained the unmanned weapon communication data center disguised as a gunpowder testing lab.

With classified information like that, it would ordinarily take years to confirm the facility even existed, much less determine its location. But a group of magicians had no trouble taking control.

And once they held the location, they wouldn’t even need to use magic to deceive the unmanned weaponry.

They were even gradually identifying the locations of the 12 directors. All the information that had been kept so unnaturally under wraps had to be hidden somewhere in the facilities they were taking. Also, Kanzaki and the others didn’t even need any knowledge or skills with machines. By placing the necessary symbols on the devices in question and holding out their hands, they could read the residual thoughts left by the people who had operated them.

Science side telepathy and magic side spells worked entirely differently.

Which meant there was no defense against this unknown form of attack.

(Aleister. …Given who he was, I doubt this approach would have worked back when he was in charge. But things have changed.)

The R&C Occultics affair had partially exposed the existence of magic to the world, but based on the response from the city, the exposure hadn’t been serious enough to launch a specialized attack against a professional magician. Did information that spread through fads not stick around long? Not only did people simply stop paying attention, but any knowledge could be distorted into uselessness as it spread.

They had already secured a few of the directors, so it looked like they could stick to the current plan while staying on the lookout for any surprise attacks.

Kanzaki and the rest had won.

(This just leaves the District 10 prison. The biggest hurdle will be whether we can checkmate him without directly approaching that most crucial point, but it looks like this will end without giving them a chance to send out the science side’s angel.)

“Other teams have taken District 15’s broadcast station and smartphone data center. Anti-Skill, was it? We can now block the drive recorders and tablets they use. Apparently arrest warrants are all digital nowadays, so this effectively leaves them powerless. Does this make phase 1 a success, Priestess?”

“I suppose it does.”

Kanzaki Kaori did not look pleased by Tsushima’s report.

This had been their plan of course, but…

(It was too easy. Was the science side really already on its last legs?)

The world-renowned Anglican Church had deployed a large number of personnel for this, but it had still only been a blitzkrieg strike of less than half an hour.

What had happened to the power balance between science and magic? The two sides being too evenly matched for any kind of attack had supposedly been the best way to keep the peace, but now it looked like one side would endlessly push back the other.

Monotone beeping sounded within the vast structure with no workers or supervisors.

A communication device had received a call.

“Are you the dumbasses making a mess of an already messy situation?”

“Just a moment,” said Kanzaki as she made a few operations on the data center’s devices. “I just set this facility to handle some of the processing that had grown unstable. Of course, I only mean I followed the instructions on the warning window. I hope that stabilized communications somewhat.”

“What are you after?”

“We could not allow Academy City to remain in charge after discovering the city itself breaks the treaty between magic and science. And if the city still contains some secrets after Aleister left, then the best way of ensuring a solid foundation for the fight against Coronzon is for our Anglican Church to temporarily take over management of the city.”

“The treaty…” said Itsuwa, sounding somewhat worried.

“Take over management, my ass. You know what you’ve done is an invasion, don’t you? Besides, I’ve never even heard of this treaty you’re referencing.”

“That goes back to before you took over. And now that we know Lola Stuart of the Anglican Church was Great Demon Coronzon and Academy City’s board chairman was Crowley, that agreement likely was a meaningless and empty thing. Plus, both Archbishop Lola and Board Chairman Aleister are officially considered dead. It is very unclear if any agreement made between the two holds any power anymore.”

And of course, it provided the new board chairman with no defense here.

In a way, it may have helped him that he hadn’t played a part in it.

“If we don’t do anything, Coronzon will continue to take over Academy City’s functions. We need to stop her Adikalika spell as much as anyone. Plus, we cannot allow large numbers of innocents to die of starvation, freezing, accidents, or the general chaos.”

“Tch.”

But Kanzaki Kaori did not gloat here.

She simply spoke calmly to the many magicians on her side.

“We will manage Academy City. That means the safety of the city’s residents and their property is our responsibility. Do not forget that we are rightfully to blame if a single person in the city starves during a blackout or dies in a traffic accident. Each team is to distribute personnel across the city to restore order and, if necessary, clear snow or guide traffic.”

In truth, Kanzaki Kaori did not have a clear view of it all.

Their original mission had been to retrieve Index.

The plan to take control of Academy City had only been if the city refused to return her. It had simply been reworked for use in the fight against Coronzon.

It was all the result of chance.

In this, she was the opposite of Kamijou Touma and his misfortune.

Was it Kanzaki Kaori’s unnatural level of luck that had allowed it all to come together so well?

(I always get first prize all on my own. And by holding the spot at the top, my luck sends my neighbors down toward hell. It makes me sick.)

Great Demon Coronzon was attempting to use the entire city to construct a single massive spell.

The fact that Academy City could use magic was a major problem in and of itself, but Kanzaki thought making that accusation now would be misjudging their priorities. Doing that now would be playing right into the demon’s hands as she prepared Adikalika.

They could not give her time.

Fighting back against Coronzon was the more urgent task.

So if the Anglicans used magic to try and take back the city the demon was using magic to hijack, they could establish an evenly-matched tug-of-war.

“All we have under our control are the bare minimum of electricity, gas, and water… But the Adikalika described by the current archbishop would instantly blow away this brief calm. In fact, it would plunge the entire world into the fires of war. We must avoid a meaningless three-way war between the Anglican Church, the Roman Catholic Church, and Academy City. By any means necessary.”

She doubted they could take complete control back from Coronzon at this point, but they could at least delay her.

They had done all this just for that.

They had even pressed their blades and magic against the people they were supposed to be helping.

Kanzaki Kaori clenched her teeth.

“I hope this will slow her at least a little…but even then it will only buy some time. This crisis will not end unless something is done about Coronzon herself.”

===Part 9===

Back inside the half-destroyed consulate…

“A large Anglican group…just took over the city and are keeping order for the city?”

A dazed Kamijou parroted what Accelerator had just told them.

This was a new turn of events.

Academy City was on the verge of death with no means of fighting back, but still.

And even if it looked like the Anglicans were providing friendly cooperation, it sounded a lot like they had concluded the city no longer had the strength left to keep its own peace.

It was looking like the very framework of Academy City could collapse from conflict between humans before Great Demon Coronzon even did anything.

“Dion Fortune, was it?” asked Accelerator. “Do something about this. You’re their boss, aren’t you!?”

“Well…”

This should have been a basic question and request.

Yet Fortune seemed reluctant to respond.

“If I had to guess, I really don’t think my power would be very effective here. I mean, the previous archbishop was Lola Stuart…''in other words, Great Demon Coronzon'', right? After being betrayed by the person at the very top, they’re going to be skeptical of anything coming from the next person in that role. And technically speaking, I’m not even human. I started out as a scout created by Coronzon.”

The Anglican Church couldn’t leave their top spot empty and they had needed someone to fill the role, but did that not mean they actually had much trust in the chosen individual?

They ordinarily did what she said, but that might not hold once the world was on the verge of destruction.

“Damn,” Kamijou muttered under his breath.

Yet again things were looking worse.

His plan to get Alice Anotherbible accepted by the world by advertising her as the hero who had saved the world by defeating Coronzon was already falling apart.

Academy City had been the perfect place to send the magic side’s greatest tinderbox because the place had no connection to magic.

But now that Academy City itself was known to be steeped in magic, the Anglican Church would never agree to leave Alice Anotherbible there. In fact, there would be fears that adding Alice’s incredible power to Academy City’s arsenal could lead to the creation of a third faction that could wield both magic and science.

And in fact, R&C Occultics had used both as a weapon and had caused great chaos during its short time in business.

Then Dion Fortune spoke from the sofa.

“Wait. Hold on.”

“What now?”

“Well, there’s another operation being carried out in parallel to that one.”

“What exactly is it!?”

Kamijou’s strong question did not get an answer out of Fortune.

After a while, she finally spoke quietly and quickly without looking him in the eye.

“If my people aren’t interested in obeying me…that one might actually be even more dangerous?”

===Part 10===

“That’s it. That’s Academy City’s outer wall,” said Index, holding the calico cat.

She had been communicating with the Anglican Church using carrier pigeons instead of EM signals or fiber optic cables. With no home in Academy City and magicians the world over after the grimoire library in her head, she had no option but to return to England.

She heard a sudden voice.

But she couldn’t see anyone around.

Index had made a friend here in Academy City.

Kazakiri Hyouka.

“So you’re going…”

“I am.”

“I’ll miss you, but if this is the path you’ve chosen, I won’t stop you.”

Index was glad they got a chance to talk before she left.

But that wasn’t all.

Kazakiri had one more thing to say.

“But be careful. Don’t let your guard down until the very end.”

“?”

The disembodied voice stopped there.

Othinus, the 15cm girl on Index’s shoulder, sighed.

“I know I’m not one to talk, but you meet the strangest people.”

Maybe so.

Index continued through the red snow to approach the city wall.

“Oh, there you are.”

She heard a voice.

It was Agnese Sanctis.

Sisters Lucia, Angelene, and more were there as well. The Amakusas would be better acquainted with Japanese geography, but apparently the Roman Catholic unit that had joined the Anglicans was here as well.

“That’s odd,” whispered Othinus up on Index’s shoulder.

Come to think of it, wasn’t the Anglican unit supposed to be waiting just outside the wall?

The cat mewed. Apparently he wasn’t bothered.

With Index’s perfect memory, she knew she wasn’t misremembering the plan. They were supposed to protect her after she left the city…

“Everything’s gotten all confused. This Great Demon Coronzon – I think it was? – has appeared in Academy City, so we’re dealing with that before taking you back home.”

“Really?”

Index tilted her head.

Was it really safe to wait around like that?

Wasn’t the idea to get her out of Academy City and to England as quickly as possible?

“We could just head back to England I guess, but, um, if we don’t do anything about Coronzon, the country might not be there when we get back. Or something like that? Anyway, follow me.”

Agnese took the lead. And moved back into the city.

This really was strange.

“(Hey.)”

“?”

“(Be cautious. A last-minute change of plans is more dangerous than the grim reaper on the front line.)”

Othinus kept her voice low so Agnese and the rest couldn’t hear.

Which meant she was working to hide their doubts.

This had been odd from the start. The idea had been to meet Index secretly and help her escape the city, yet Agnese’s group didn’t seem concerned about discovery. Even though Academy City could easily view this as a betrayal. It was almost like they weren’t at all worried about being caught.

“For now, let’s get you to District 2. Letting you see Kanzaki would be best.”

===Part 11===

“(E-excuse me. We have a report from the Former Agnese Forces. They say they’ve brought Index-san here.)”

The room was so quiet that Itsuwa’s modest whisper to Kanzaki managed to permeate the entire space.

A strange air hung over the District 2 unmanned weapon data center.

And this air was no metaphor.

The odor of death hung over the place.

Just as human sweat and the smell of a beast were different things, the stench of your own species decomposing was somehow different. The brain warned you to be on your guard and not to overlook anything.

It said danger was approaching.

“Hello, hello. I’m Isabella Theism of Necessarius. My specialty is necromancy.”

There was a stark difference between the carefree smile and the words it produced.

Necromancy.

“I know it has a sketchy reputation, but fortunetelling and the impurity of death are really about the only two superstitions that remain in the depths of ordinary people’s hearts even in a world of science. Like seeing a house as special because someone was killed there, or seeing a rope as special because it was used to hang someone. See what I mean? It’s something you can’t rid yourself of with equations. You might find it silly, but it’ll still be there inside you. That is what I make use of☆”

A stir spread around Kanzaki Kaori.

The Amakusas had been developed (by Kanzaki herself) to be pure and straightforward in that regard. They couldn’t so easily accept someone who called herself a necromancer.

And the woman appeared accustomed to the reaction.

She herself was a beautiful woman with silver hair and brown skin, but all she did was smile in rags permeated with the odor of death.

Agnese, who must have come all the way to District 2 to escort Index, joined the conversation while brushing red snow off her shoulders.

“She has experience as a team leader. I’ve heard she had cleaned up several troublesome messes on a global scale, like the Cadaver Island Struggle and the Necropolis Calamity. …Which means she was hiding who she really is ''last time we worked together''.”

“Oh, yeah. I did do those things, didn’t I? But I wasn’t hiding it exactly. I just forgot is all. Why bother remembering incidents once they’re over?”

“Then did you solve those with necromancy too?”

“Everyone starts off in their own unique way, but they all end up wailing by the end. ‘I wish I’d never been born’, and stuff like that. So I can’t say who was who. They all blur together in my memory☆”

This was no laughing matter.

Both of those had been true wars with, even looking just at the official count, over a thousand combatants. And these had all been the professional magicians of top-level magic cabals. If the count went past the official members and included the workers building barricades, the lookouts and spies hidden here and there, and the mercenaries (from the magic side of course) who were invited in to bolster their personnel, who could say how many more it was. And they had all ended up much the same.

Only Isabella herself continued smiling emptily.

“Hee hee. Did I scare you?”

An “eep” escaped someone.

Itsuwa jumped at suddenly being the target of the woman’s attention, so Tsushima, who was the big sister type, instinctually inserted herself between the two of them.

“Unfermented wine and flavorless brown bread – both symbols of death,” sang Isabella regardless. “The name necromancy sounds frightening, but that’s all it really comes down to. It did used to involve drawing magic circles on dead bodies, but nowadays everyone uses imitations so they don’t gather the attention of the police. This country has ceremonies where you burn or bury a doll in place of a person, doesn’t it? It’s like that.”

“Eh?” Itsuwa sounded surprised. “You mean you don’t actually work with dead bodies?”

“I suppose the closest thing I do would be borrowing their clothing. Although different factions are split on whether that’s to search for the deceased’s soul so you can summon it or if you use it to remind someone of the deceased so you can extract the related memories and testimony from their mind.”

To be blunt, there were ways in the modern age to legally (although only by abusing loopholes in the law) acquire a full dead human body, but Isabella did not do that.

She had a simple reason.

She didn’t see any real purpose in having a real corpse.

''At least in Western European necromancy'', the actual ceremonies were very different from the public conception.

“Going grave digging and making a servant out of the dead body? Resurrecting a mummy from an ancient sarcophagus? No, no, I would never. Nobody uses those methods anymore – they’re too inefficient. Besides, the essence of necromancy is communicating with the spirits of the dead. So instead of shutting off their physical limiters to provide superhuman strength, it’s about acquiring information you shouldn’t have by using spirits who have been freed from the physical laws. So really you could say it’s like an uglier version of divination.”

From a Japanese perspective, it was like a version of the Kokkuri-san that used the dead.

The technique was only used to learn.

You couldn’t expect to intentionally mimic the cases where the necromancer screwed up and ended up possessed, allowing a mysterious entity into their body so they could surpass the laws of physics and shoot fire from their hands. That was far too dangerous.

As long as you understood the proper methods, you could complete the ceremonies without an actual dead body.

It could be the room where someone died, the rope used to hang someone, or clothing covered in death odor. How much of “the air of death” an item required to guide you to a special mental state depended on the individual magician, but in this case the level of the technique came from how cost efficient it was.

Isabella Theism had reached the point that she could do this:

“Really, it’s best to have a recipe for a dead body where all the ingredients can be found at the average supermarket or home improvement store. You take some pork or beef and then you make a skull out of lumber and so on.”

“Th-that’s how it’s done? That sounds more like a shop class project.”

Itsuwa’s comment made Isabella clap her hands together in delight.

“It all depends on the quality. Back before CG was so easy to use, splatter films had all sorts of tricks to make convincing fake guts. The poor image quality helped, but the end result was a lot more grotesque and disturbing than what you see in modern horror.”

Kanzaki sighed and spoke up.

“I don’t know if we will have any use for you. For now, I imagine the tug-of-war over the city against Coronzon will continue as we try to delay the activation of Adikalika, but magic to artificially consume lives doesn’t sound very useful there.”

“You think you’re in control of the entire city?” quietly asked Isabella. In a mocking tone. “Do you really believe that? Take as much of the surface-level infrastructure and important facilities as you like, you won’t fully stop the city from functioning. There’s so much more still hidden below the surface. Not to mention you haven’t even captured half of the 12 directors and have no idea where the rest are. You can’t stop Coronzon’s work by desperately trying to plug all the holes. Academy City has more than one map. It looks like a peaceful city at first, but the things hidden by the multiple overlapping maps are what make it so horrifying.”

It wasn’t Kanzaki who immediately replied.

Itsuwa made the first rebuttal while trembling.

“H-how can you know that? Academy City is supposed to be an unknown world for you too.”

“''I can smell death here.'' The city is thick with it, so there has to be more we aren’t seeing.”

She made it sound obvious.

Or maybe this was a sense unique to necromancers.

Kanzaki asked a careful question.

“Finding fault is easy, but if you were in charge, what exactly would you do to solve the problem?”

“I will answer that with my first job as a necromancer.”

Isabella turned her attention toward something other than Great Demon Coronzon or Academy City.

She focused on the girl who they had supposedly been asked to retrieve and protect.

“The grimoire library, hm? Quite a troublesome thing to be left in Academy City with all this going on. It was miraculous good fortune that Coronzon didn’t secure her before we found her. Coronzon will not leave someone so dangerous free. Dealing with that must be our top priority.”

“What are you going to do with Index!?”

“For now, locking her up should work. She shouldn’t be a problem as long as Coronzon can’t abuse her knowledge, so the situation isn’t pressing enough to require ''silencing her more permanently.'' But to be clear, that’s only for now.”

Isabella Theism was saying she would do it if it became necessary.

She viewed the current Adikalika as the borderline with the worst case. She was saying they had to keep those 103,001 grimoires from being used to either greatly abbreviate Adikalika’s preparation period or to create magic even more troublesome than Adikalika.

She was correct.

While also twisted at a fundamental level.

“The other uncertain factor would be Kamijou Touma.”

Isabella Theism actually sounded amused.

The brown necromancer continued.

“The effects of his right hand are certainly fascinating, but whoever they might be, ''someone who has died once already is part of my domain.'' He is dead meat. That is a resource that should be utilized for maximum effectiveness. And I mean toward resolving the Coronzon and Adikalika problem, of course.”

“That is unaccep-”

“Oh? And who exactly can protect someone who is still considered dead on paper?”

“Wait.”

The interruption came from the white nun.

Despite the situation, Index’s concern wasn’t for herself.

“D-do you mean Touma?”

“…Sigh, what a pain.”

“Why are you talking about him that way? Died once already? Why would you phrase it that way? What exactly happened to Touma!?”

Index heard a sticky splat.

From her shoulders.

They had been grabbed by discolored corpse hands with visible bone and a rotting stench.

She didn’t even have time to scream. Rotting corpses too melted and swollen to even tell their sex had grabbed her shoulders and pinned her down on the floor.

“Agh!!”

“Don’t worry. These are decoy bodies made from sanitary ingredients,” said a cool-faced Isabella.

But no matter what they were made from, these were “dead bodies” professionally made to be indistinguishable from real ones. The shock of unexpected contact with one was no different.

“I came all the way to Japan to do my job. I am not interested in your home drama.”

Index had a perfect memory.

So she could never forget anything she saw or felt.

So.

“Don’t…you dare.”

A new voice joined in.

Stiyl Magnus’s.

Unlike with Index, there had been no report of his arrival. Kanzaki was supposedly in charge here, but she had no idea why he was here or how he had gotten so injured and weakened.

But something must have happened for him to be so badly hurt.

Stiyl gasped for breath and practically had to drag his body over as he approached.

“What do you think you’re doing, Isabella Theism? You want to lock her up? Stop that this instant. You aren’t fit to command the Anglicans… As a Saint, Kanzaki is the one in command here. If you’re going to insist otherwise, I will punish you!!”

“Ehh? You’re really going with that? The guy who betrayed Kanzaki the first chance he got really shouldn’t be talking about the sanctity of rules.”

A large mass dropped from the necromancer’s rags, landing at her feet.

It was a thoroughly dried, and thus lightweight, corpse.

Had it been pasted to the inside of her rags, arranged just right to be hidden despite the many holes?

It was likely only an imitation made from a mixture of cow bones, pork, ceramic, and more.

“Is this really a job to outsource and leave in the hands of a subcontractor? Obviously the on-site leader should be an actual Anglican. And I would say you’ve disqualified yourself after rushing off on a personal vendetta.”

The hunk of death lying at her feet suddenly absorbed all the moisture around her.

It grew to nearly three meters and lost its humanoid shape.

Kanzaki realized what was happening.

“Wait, Isabe-!?”

A wet pop followed.

The blood and innards were red. Beads of death were scattered evenly in all 360 degrees. Each one could ''eat through'' glass used to store nearly any chemical and plastic that wouldn’t decompose even after buried for 100 years. And there were tens – if not hundreds – of thousands of them.

“!?”

Even Kanzaki Kaori flinched before that contaminant. She sharply strung out invisibly thin wires to sacrifice them to the goop. To protect the Amakusas behind her, not herself.

Which created the tiniest of openings.

The Saint who insisted she would save everyone could only watch as Stiyl Magnus and Isabella Theism both took a step forward.

The tall priest’s eyes displayed contempt.

“Is that all?”

He spread out his rune cards.

A flame sword extended from his clenched right hand.

“Did you really think that could stop me, Isabella!?”

Death by burning symbolized purification in Christianity. But it did not mean salvation for the object being burned. Instead, it annihilated the object to eliminate it from the world. Some even believed that a body burned according to a certain ritualized procedure lost the right to participate in the Last Judgment.

It was a matter of compatibility.

Any amount of that contaminant could be eliminated by Stiyl’s flame sword.

Thus, the necromancer’s trick proved meaningless as the priest’s sword sliced through that unclean space. Along with the magician who had scattered the deadly contaminant in the first place.

The flame roared loud as it sucked in oxygen. More than just toss fire at her from without, the brown necromancer’s slashed body was burned from within.

It was thorough and swift.

But she put up too little resistance for someone being burned alive.

Eventually, Stiyl caught on.

“Is this another imitation made from different ingredients!?”

By the time the words had left him, he was surrounded by brown women.

All imitations.

But he didn’t have time to gasp.

Directly behind him, Isabella Theism hid among the imitations.

The action she took wasn’t even all that difficult.

It was gentle even.

She simply placed a hand on the priest’s shoulder.

Stiyl Magnus’s eyes rolled back in his head.

He coughed up something dark. A clump of blood. More of the hideous color spilled from his eyelids and ears. But most importantly, his two-meter form crumpled straight down.

Even the veteran Necessarius members who were world-renowned for their skill in battle against magicians couldn’t tell what had happened.

“Unlike you, I came all the way to Japan to do my job.”

Only the expert in death – the brown necromancer – chuckled and spoke.

“I am not interested in your adolescent escapades.”

<noinclude>
{{Toaru_Nav|prev=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:GT_Volume13_Prologue|next=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:GT_Volume13_Chapter2}}
</noinclude>

Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume12 Chapter2

2025-05-22T04:03:04Z

Churronzon: typo fix

==Chapter 2: Funeral – Good_Bye_Bad.==

===Part 1===

Cold rain that couldn’t quite become snow fell from thick gray clouds.

It was weaker than before.

But that made it seem more stable, suggesting it would last longer.

A funeral was underway.

It had begun in the school auditorium.

The entire student body was gathered there, so they had to line up based on a system to fit. …Except Aogami Pierce and Fukiyose Seiri had frozen up nearby. Apparently Komoe-sensei had panicked, so their class’s guidance was a mess. But that boy may have appreciated a human response like that.

The space was large enough to hold hundreds of people.

That meant the heating was only so effective. Even with the air conditioning and halogen heaters, the chill could not be fully banished.

It was the presence of death.

Something you normally didn’t sense but crept up on everyone the same.

Aogami Pierce felt like the world itself were telling him an attempt to act cheerful would not fundamentally change what they were here for.

This was a funeral.

A member of their class was dead.

“Thank you all for attending despite the poor weather. Perhaps the heavens themselves are weeping for the deceased. It pains me just as much to lose someone so young.”

A young Buddhist monk got started with a microphone in hand. Fukiyose Seiri was only familiar with the term “abbot” as a title for a Buddhist monk, but she wasn’t sure if there was a proper hierarchy there.

“The abbot is the head of a single temple,” explained Aogami Pierce. “They’re the one who leads the rest of the temple’s monks. But there are a fair number of temples where the abbot is the only monk due to the aging population or just being shorthanded, so a lot of people get the terms monk and abbot confused. It’s unusual for someone that young to be one.”

“Why do you know so much about this?”

“What, are you really not reading that social media gag manga that went viral on New Year’s? It’s called ‘I Was Reincarnated and Got a Hypnotizing 5 yen Coin That Makes People Do Anything I Say, but I Ended Up in a Buddhist Temple Full of Macho Monks’. The unexpected mismatch!! What fate awaits our gloomy heroine after the ascetic life and vegetarian food cleanses her in body and soul!?”

“Why can’t someone ban this guy’s very existence?” asked an exasperated Fukiyose.

But had her senses dulled over winter break? She appeared to have forgotten insults of that level were nothing more than a reward. She could be two or even three times as harsh and he would still welcome it.

The screen on the wall behind the auditorium stage came to life.

“I am truly grateful you have all gathered today for our son.”

Remote comments by Kamijou Touma’s parents played on the screen. They apparently used more than just telegrams in this day and age.

A loud slam came from the back of the auditorium.

Someone had been unable to contain themselves and rushed out while covering their mouth. For a brief moment, the outside light shined into the dark auditorium. Surprisingly, this person was not from their class. From where they came from, they must have been a student from another year.

“Kami-yan sure was loved.”

“He had the weirdest connections. I sometimes saw him speaking with an upperclassman girl.”

There was some kind of accident that led to shouting, but the funeral itself continued without a hitch.

Aogami Pierce got some words out while staring out ahead.

“Why…?”

“Hm?”

“Why do people die so easily?”

This was somehow different from before.

Death.

The word carried so much more weight. Instead of the light and empty feeling of losing a life in a video game, this carried the heavy weight of reality.

Maybe that was what a funeral was.

It was about saying goodbye.

But in a different way from a classmate moving away.

Instead of not being able to see him again after this, they already couldn’t see him again. People could not accept that so quickly, so they needed a way to smooth over the rough edges of reality or else the small society that was a school could collapse.

It was like bringing things into focus.

Uh, oh.

It wasn’t so bad when the image before Aogami’s eyes was blurry. He could stand that. But once the outlines came into focus, the corners of his eyes could be in trouble.

Trouble?

Who said it was wrong to cry? It wasn’t a competition and who did he even think he was competing with? Apparently adolescent rebelliousness could needlessly screw with people’s lives even here.

“…”

He realized he hadn’t heard Fukiyose’s voice in a while.

When he focused, he could hear some breaths seemingly covered by an unseen hand.

Or maybe she had a handkerchief out.

He wasn’t about to peek over at the next seat, though.

He envied the people who could let themselves cry here. He was always shouting in the classroom, but he felt some kind of barrier forcing himself to hold back here.

Aogami Pierce was not a diligent student.

Even during ordinary classes, he would stare out the window and daydream about battling terrorists.

He had always thought Kamijou Touma would survive to the very end.

He could do anything in his fantasies, but for some reason that boy always survived longer than Aogami himself. Aogami would sometimes save everyone and end up with a harem and he would sometimes get dramatically shot and die, but no matter what happened, Kamijou Touma would always survive to the end, no matter how beat up he was.

But.

Reality was something else entirely.

He could think of any number of things to say if he were the one to die, but he couldn’t think of a single one when it was Kamijou Touma who had died.

“I’m such an idiot,” he muttered to himself.

He hadn’t expected this.

Something had happened somewhere he wasn’t aware of.

He guessed people all over thought these things as they lived with regret.

“Now, if you will please come forward to burn incense. Yes, it will help if you climb the stairs on the right and descend the stairs on the left. You may begin.”

===Part 2===

Meanwhile, two girls experienced this from a different viewpoint.

District 7.

An ordinary high school.

The entire student body was gathered in the auditorium. But even with the warmth of hundreds of bodies, the chilly air could not be entirely banished by the air conditioning too weak for the size of the space and the halogen heaters set up in a hurry.

That acted as the breath of death in contrast to the human warmth.

A large portrait photo sat atop the stage.

The face belonged to Kamijou Touma.

They must not have expected this. He looked almost villainous on the portrait forcibly blown up from his student ID. But maybe anyone would in an expressionless ID photo taken from head on.

A part-time monk, who was apparently an unsuccessful entertainer who did this as a side job, held a microphone.

His weirdly cheerful voice may have come from mixing together his two jobs.

“Thank you all for attending despite the poor weather. Perhaps the heavens themselves are weeping for the deceased. It pains me just as much to lose someone so young.”

In addition to the student body, a guest space had been prepared at one side.

Mikoto and Shokuhou were seated there.

One of them was shaking.

“Brrrrrr. Misa-Misaka-sa-Misaka-san, it’s so c-c-cold, you need to w-w-w-warm me up.”

“Are you even wearing clothes?”

Mikoto sighed while using a hand to the face to shove away the idiot queen – who Mikoto was beginning to suspect she might actually be “wearing” body paint – as she shivered and tried to cling to Mikoto from the side.

This was a high school.

For a middle schooler, it was like another world entirely.

But the usual tension she would feel was nowhere to be found.

She had actually been here before, but…

(I never imagined I would visit that idiot’s high school for this.)

Her heavy sighing wouldn’t stop.

However, she saw no one who could be his parents in the guest section.

Unsurprisingly.

Given all the paperwork and approvals required, there just hadn’t been time to invite someone in to Academy City.

“?”

“What is it, scheming queen?”

“Oh, I was just wondering who the chief mourner is. Ahn, halogen heater☆”

Shokuhou Misaki’s eyes melted at a machine that was like a “warm fan” that an official had placed in the nearby aisle. She looked about ready to spread her arms and hug the heater with hearts displayed in her pupils. Why had she even come to the funeral?

That aside…

(Chief mourner.)

Come to think of it, this was odd.

As fancy as all this looked, the crucial pillars were missing.

It all felt hollow and artificial.

“That said, we must not keep the deceased here forever. As painful as it will be, we must continue with the ceremony to put him at ease as he takes his journey into the great beyond.”

A gentle sound enveloped the auditorium.

Classical music of unknown composer and title began to play.

“…?”

Mikoto knew how to play the piano and the violin, but she frowned. She didn’t recognize this. It may have been healing music recently composed entirely on a computer. That would be fitting for Academy City.

A slideshow of photos played along with the music.

It was obvious what these were from.

“The Daihaseisai, the Ichihanaransai – Kamijou Touma-san really did smile so brightly during these events.”

''Uh, uh…

Damp sobs spilled from here and there.

But wait.

Hold on.

What was this? Even in his school, how many people even knew Kamijou Touma? He hadn’t been part of any clubs and he had no connections outside his class. He wasn’t a master shogi player and he didn’t get the top score in the national practice exam. So why were all of those students who looked like second or third years shedding tears?

Mikoto was astonished.

Maybe it was a Pavlovian response, like people who would always cry when hearing a music box playing when in a sad mood.

“They’re like the delinquents who only cry at the graduation ceremony.”

Now that she had recovered using the heat of the halogen heater, Shokuhou’s whisper pierced sharply into Mikoto.

You smile at New Year’s and you cry at funerals.

That was all it was.

Like flipping a switch or turning a dial.

Was that really enough?

Could someone’s life end with this?

Of course, it would also piss her off if someone was chatting or using their phone in the middle of the ceremony, but this felt different somehow. The tears felt cheap. She wanted to stand up and shout that this wasn’t right.

Mikoto was sad.

She didn’t know what to do now that the time had come to say goodbye.

But.

She felt her heart distancing itself at the scene she found here. The distance kept growing. Her heart had lost the ability to sense her feelings.

Why?

It was already over. She knew that. Yet she felt some kind of powerful impatience growing inside her.

Was this really enough?

Would this mark the end of someone’s life?

“To represent you all, his homeroom teacher Tsukuyomi Komoe-sensei will now present some flowers.”

“Uhh.”

It might all look emotional, but it was nothing but checking off everything on the list.

It was a routine.

It was a ceremony to cut someone away from society, forget them, and erase them.

And.

Mikoto saw a red dot out of the corner of her eye.

“?”

Curious, she looked over to see a video being recorded.

Since she wasn’t familiar with funerals, she thought maybe that was a way to leave some memory behind, but…

“(That’s the funeral company. I bet they’ll chop it up and use it in their ads.)”

Shokuhou was more coldhearted.

Perhaps she was more accustomed to death than Mikoto.

But from where?

There was no answer to that question. As Shokuhou faced forward, her profile looked somehow lonely.

The entertainer hosting the event continued on.

“We will now receive a message from Kamijou Touma-san’s parents.”

The slide show of school events switched to something else.

“I am truly grateful you have all gathered today for our son.”

Were they using an online conference app?

The white wall behind the auditorium stage acted as a large screen to project someone who was presumably his father.

He was likely at home. The room behind him looked lived in.

Maybe this had been too sudden for anything else.

His user name was displayed below him in small text.

Kamijou Touya.

His flowing words were anything but coldhearted.

Even through the screen, Mikoto could sense just how hard that grown adult was clenching his teeth to get through it.

That distant place carried a much more appropriate mood than the site of the funeral.

Or so it seemed to Mikoto.

She sensed something authentic there.

“I’m sure Touma’s life in Academy City was full of smiles and memories with all of you. He never was great in school and he didn’t develop any kind of esper power, but we have all of you to thank for allowing him to enjoy himself enough to forget about those things. Our son seemed so happy in all the emails and messages he sent us. He also sent plenty of photos and videos. Those limited glimpses into his life were enough to know his time there was a bright and happy one. And I imagine he enjoyed himself even more than he let us know. I would like to thank you all deeply on behalf of our son. Even if his life there was cut short, he was truly fortunate to be surrounded by so many wonderful frie- kh...no, I can’t do it!!”

His trembling voice grew strained partway through.

The middle-aged man’s face filled the screen. With tears welling in his eyes.

“He was our family!! Our son is dead!!! But they won’t let us in the city!! They won’t even tell us the exact cause of death!! Is it not as safe inside those walls as we were led to believe!? This is crazy! What the hell is going on in that ci- (voice muted)”

His mouth flapped silently for a few more seconds before the video also cut out.

The host put on a fake smile and worked at smoothing that over.

“Oh, dear. The signal appears to be unstable and since it still hasn’t come back, we will move on.”

How could they just move past that!?

Mikoto just about stood up from her folding chair, but Shokuhou grabbed her hand.

Firmly, to hold her in place.

Even his parent’s wholehearted rebellion had accomplished nothing.

That was just one branch on the flowchart.

By following that branch through, they could bring the ceremony back on track.

“Now, if you will please come forward to burn incense. Yes, it will help if you climb the stairs on the right and descend the stairs on the left. You may begin.”

If the entire student body burned incense, it would take all day. Instead, each class sent a representative up to the altar. The staff held stopwatches and kept everything on the schedule determined during the dry run. Someone had died, but they didn’t allow anything to break down.

It was like the sand in an hourglass.

Once the stock had been used up, it was over. The coffin would be shut and placed in the hearse to be taken to the crematorium. Then nothing would remain. Kamijou Touma would be burned to ashes, leaving nothing even on the genetic level.

The entertainer monk continued with a smile.

“Finally, I would like to read the telegrams that have arrived from those close to the deceased. To start with, um, we have a Miss Leivinia Birdway from England.”

It was ending.

The funeral really was going to end.

“You’re looking at it wrong.”

Still facing forward, Shokuhou spoke quietly but clearly in her mourning clothes.

Even though Mental Out wasn’t supposed to work on Mikoto.

Her voice was somewhat stiff, but she still managed to say it.

“We have to bring his life to an end ourselves. So, Misaka-san, you need to prepare yourself to actually say goodbye.”

===Part 3===

Outside in the frigid January city, Index and Othinus stood in the rain.

Without an umbrella.

Breakfast time had passed, but for once Index had no appetite.

On her shoulder, Othinus held down the brim of her hat and looked up.

“Good grief. Even the weather forecast felt need to betray us… This unnatural rain is more what I would expect of that human’s misfortune.”

“That would be just like Touma.”

“Along with the fake-looking condition of the sky.”

“?”

A long vehicle passed them. The strange automobile was decorated with black and gold.

It was a hearse.

Two buses followed after it.

Once they had fully passed by, Othinus whispered a question.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go?”

“What about you?”

“I am the god of war, magic, and deception. This isn’t Baldr’s trial and I’m not the type to cry at funerals. But you’re a nun, aren’t you? This really is your last chance. You might be fine now, but the regret over not seeing him off will weigh heavy on you later.”

“I’m still in training.”

Index hung her head.

She had to be feeling something.

Othinus didn’t address it.

The one-eyed god with a lance was rarely depicted as kind.

“Now, what will we do? We are a living sample of a Magic God and a grimoire library. If we head out into the world with Academy City’s protection gone, magic cabals the world over will be after us both. If you aren’t interested in following him into death, then you need to continue working at survival.”

The city was surrounded by a thick wall and invisible EM and IR were used to cut off all wireless communications between the outside and inside. Even so, the air on both sides was the same and bugs and birds could fly across the wall with ease.

So.

Index raised her head and gave her answer.

“''We’ll do what the carrier pigeon said to.''”

“Good grief. Is that method just so old-fashioned they overlooked it? But as soon as Academy City learns about it, they’ll probably fill that hole with pheromones or light or something.”

If they headed to his school now, they might make it in time.

But they didn’t.

They couldn’t.

Index gave her reasoning.

“If I was there to say goodbye, I know I’d ruin the whole ceremony by crying too loud.”

The cat said nothing in the girl’s arms.

He wasn’t supposed to understand what was going on, but for some reason he seemed to.

===Part 4===

“It’s over,” muttered Aogami Pierce.

All the strength left his body.

He made it sound like his team had just lost a big tournament.

“That’s the end of Kami-yan’s funeral.”

“Pull yourself together. Komoe-sensei is calling us over to get to the crematorium.”

Perhaps Fukiyose found it easier if she focused her mind on a task. She seemed to be constantly searching for a new one.

Aogami rubbed his belly.

“I’m starving… I want to devour my lunch while watching an isekai cooking anime to give a psychological boost to the convenience store bento.”

“How about you chew on a handkerchief?”

Only his classmates were going to the crematorium. As much as they had sobbed during the funeral, the students from other years didn’t wait around before leaving the auditorium. Almost like a movie ad with people making insincere-sounding comments at an advance screening. The kind of ad that made it sound like the record for most moving film of the century was broken every other second.

Aogami saw a busty black-haired upperclassman girl look back toward the stage just once at the exit before leaving.

“Would they even show up if it was us who died?”

“This is better than it could be. Do you ordinarily get teary-eyed seeing the news on TV or online?” dryly asked Fukiyose.

That she sounded more irritable than normal may have been the greatest compliment to Kamijou Touma who had disappeared from their school.

===Part 5===

A woman in a beige habit stood in a city of white and black.

That was Human Aleister Crowley.

The ridiculous artificial rain continued to fall.

The golden retriever stayed by his side in the frigid chill without a word of complaint, but he did ask a question here.

“You aren’t going to see it through to the end?”

“You know all too well I don’t have the courage. Why would I have struggled so much if I did?”

“The regret always comes later.”

“I know that. Better than anyone in the world,” spat Aleister.

He didn’t want to believe it.

She had promised she would break whatever rules were necessary to save the boy.

Had she broken her promise in the end?

That meant there was something even Anna Kingsford couldn’t do.

He knew this was as absurd as wanting your parents to continue to be infallible beings, but still.

“If I could only save that one,” muttered Aleister.

“?”

“That one act would have meant so much. It would have triggered a chain reaction to fix everything. But it failed at the very first domino. …That boy remains dead.”

Kihara Noukan was an unusual genius even for a Kihara, but even he had trouble grasping what Aleister was getting at.

And he knew the human wasn’t going to explain.

Whatever it was, it was a dream that had ended unrealized.

“What now?” asked the dog.

“I wouldn’t be wandering like this if I could answer that.”

Was there any meaning in life now?

His questions had reached that level.

What in this wide world should he tie his existence to?

===Part 6===

The rain was falling.

The funeral in the auditorium had ended, so most of the students were using the walkway to return to the main school building.

They were pinching something and sprinkling it on their heads. It turned out to be salt.

Mikoto sighed softly as she walked out.

“So even the students at his school treat his death as something unclean.”

“I doubt many people in Academy City understand the symbolism. Just like very few people bother looking up the etymology of words like ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’. Most people see it as no more than the done thing, like bowing your head when entering a room. And does it have to be so cold!?”

Shokuhou’s shouted breath was already visible.

And a frigid rain was falling outside.

Shokuhou had started off holding her own shoulders, but once she set her sights on Mikoto, she grabbed onto her.

“Get off, Shokuhou. Kimonos are hard to fix once they start to come undone, so don’t grab onto me.”

“Oh, c’mon. Being a hot-water bottle is about all you’re good for, Misaka-san.”

“Oh, really? Even though I happen to have some hand warmers?”

Shokuhou Misaki petrified.

The corners of her lips twitched.

Her pride appeared to be conflicted over whether or not she should put on a polite smile.

“If you don’t want any, then fine. I’ll seal them away at the bottom of my purse. In the zone where I can’t dig them out again.”

“Wait, Misaka-saaan! You win, I admit it! So please show some love to this Little Match Girl freezing in the winter collllllllld!!”

“You have everyone call you a queen and now you have the nerve to act like the unfortunate Little Match Girl?

Mikoto toyed with the unathletic girl by tossing her hand warmer packs one after another as if to have her juggle them.

…This entire exchange may have been a way of preserving their mental balance. To Mikoto, the forced cheerfulness only made her entire life seem like an act.

“Ahh…☆”

“Hey, where the hell are you shoving that hand warmer, Shokuhou!? What happened to us having a shame culture!?”

The girl was shutting her eyes, trembling, and sighing like she was sinking into a hot spring, but the details were best left unstated.

She was capable of prioritizing what really mattered, meaning she was the type who would decide to nestle together in the nude to stay warm if they were stranded on a snowy mountain in the winter. Mikoto was certain of that now.

The official next to the hearse formed a megaphone with his hands and guided them.

“The buses are over here! Um, if you’re from the school, use bus 1. If you’re a visitor, use bus 2.”

Yes, it wasn’t over yet.

Many umbrellas blossomed like flowers and gathered together.

Carried by the adults.

The coffin was loaded onto the hearse.

The black and gold vehicle was headed to District 10.

Specifically, to the crematorium.

The entire student body wouldn’t fit there, so only what appeared to be Kamjou’s class would be going.

A bus was enough to carry that many.

And a second bus was enough for the visitors.

Another time limit had appeared.

Mikoto saw the distance to the crematorium like the timer ticking down on a time bomb.

But what did that time limit matter at this point?

Death could not be overturned.

It was already over.

“…”

“Ohh, blessed heat ability. Modern conveniences are truly wonderful…”

Next to her, the queen was saying something that suggested a kotatsu was all you needed to win her heart.

The two buses left the rear of the school to follow the hearse. The reporters out front seemed to be making a minor fuss, but the buses had no obligation to wait for them.

No one on the fairly large bus uttered a word.

The GPS navigation system provided a few instructions in a female voice, but the driver appeared to be ignoring them. Maybe there was some kind of etiquette to it, but the hearse seemed to avoid the shortest route and took a longer way to their destination.

In the adjacent seat, Shokuhou whispered briefly while staring out the window being pummeled by raindrops.

“Misaka-saaan.”

“Ugh, what idiot is sending a drone after us?”

With a sparking sound, the multicopter lost control out in the rain.

But who did those persistent reporters want to attack with their articles? Surely it wasn’t Alice Anotherbible or the Transcendents from the hidden side of the world.

“Maybe you could say we sent him to his death too. We didn’t stand in his way and attack him, but we did give him a push from behind.”

“Misaka-san. Malign his resolve and determination again and I will slap you.”

But Shokuhou didn’t actually deny it.

It probably bothered her too.

It was the same when they had fought Christian Rosencreutz. It had required a lot of power to repel him and Kamijou would have been killed if it had been even slightly insufficient.

Even so.

If their power hadn’t been up to the task, would he have considered running away?

“Not likely.”

“Not a chance. I can’t see him giving up on a fight once he started it.”

He hadn’t actually started that fight himself, but no matter how unfairly he was dragged into it, he had always fought to end it. So he could gently untangle the mess of threads.

“…”

It didn’t take very long.

They arrived at the crematorium.

A large roof covered the area in front of the entrance.

Had it been designed with bad weather like this in mind?

It looked like they had to wait for the workers to deal with the coffin.

“Go on, Misaka-san.”

At Shokuhou’s prompting, Mikoto got off the bus.

She wasn’t used to descending a bus’s stairs in Japanese mourning clothes. The clothing was like a single tube, so had it even been designed with climbing and descending stairs in mind?

“Of course it was. Did you forget the stone steps leading up to Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples?”

“Oh, no. Now that idiot is correcting me.”

“Oh? Misaka-san, did you forget I am the intellectual type? Care to see who does better with our next exam ability?”

Come to think of it, didn’t they have five-story pagodas in the Edo period? And those buildings wouldn’t have had elevators or escalators.

Shokuhou Misaki continued to rub the hand warmer against her cheek. It would have run out of heat by now, so was she making use of the placebo effect? Or maybe the cold was making her hallucinate.

An official guided them into the building.

There were numbered tatami mat waiting rooms with cremation chambers lined up.

Maybe there was a rule, but the cremation chambers not in use had their doors wide open. A square metal door led into a closed space seemingly made of brick or blocks. The shape was something like a modified baker’s furnace.

Mikoto peered inside and fell silent.

“…”

It wasn’t even the size of a laundromat.

Yet it felt far too ordered and optimized.

She sighed softly.

(I’m just not used to this.)

It was actually a bit of a relief when she spotted a few old vending machines jumbled together in a corner of the long hallway. She had wanted to see something that threw off the excessive organization of the place.

“It’s nice and warm in the building at least. Ugh, but now I kind of have to use the restroom.”

“I was a fool looking for salvation in a messy idiot like her…”

They could hear the conversation of officials in some room or another.

The voices crept up from the floor like the chill.

“A healthy high school boy? He should have thick bones.”

“We’ll have to burn him for a full four hours. That way there’s no chance any trace of his DNA map or the chemicals used for esper development will remain.”

A heavy scraping sound followed.

It came from something like a piece of pottery the size of a volleyball. Something had caused it to scrape against its lid.

“What does the height chart say? Is this size good?”

That was the funerary urn.

Would a whole person really fit in something so small?

Mourning clothes Mikoto frowned.

“Hold on. I get cremating him, but who gets his ashes?”

“The funerary urn can be transferred to someone else after being placed in the grave.”

Shokuhou’s finger hovered indecisively in front of the vending machine, but she only fidgeted without actually buying any warm coffee. Her fear of artificial additives appeared to be rearing its ugly head again.

“For now, he’ll probably be temporarily buried in a public grave.”

Could they really just do that?

Even as ashes, he would officially count as “remains”.

Besides. His parents apparently weren’t in the city, so who had submitted the notification of death to the government office? Mikoto had thought you couldn’t cremate someone until that had been received.

(Then again, this is the city that buried over ten thousand clones in secret, so they may have some tricks to get around that.)

They entered the waiting room.

The space was about 45 square meters.

Perhaps everyone wanted their own space.

His high school classmates were here, but Mikoto didn’t know any of them very well. She naturally kept her distance.

It was a weird feeling.

Why was she staying by Shokuhou’s side?

And while Mikoto mostly associated funerals with flowers and incense, the scent of burning candles was stronger. Maybe because that scent was a lot more oily.

A large LCD TV sat in the tatami mat room. In addition to over-the-air, and cable, it included an online streaming app. There were also a tablet with a public SIM. That may have been so hot food could be ordered in with a bike delivery service. Mikoto recognized a few of the apps lined up on the screen.

Shokuhou pointed at a sliding screen by the wall that seemed to lead to storage space.

“It looks like they have napping blankets in there.”

“I can’t imagine sleeping here could lead to sweet dreams.”

Four hours.

That explained why they had so many entertainment options for killing time.

“Shokuhou.”

“Yes?”

“Can you last four hours?”

“Sorry, excuse me a moment while I go freshen up.”

Western mourning clothes Shokuhou vanished somewhere with a severe look on her face. She had apparently gone out to visit the ladies room. Unable to relax without anything to focus on, Mikoto grabbed the TV remote and faced the giant screen. The time for New Year’s specials was over. A middle schooler like her had no idea what usually aired on weekday mornings.

(But maybe it would look more authentic if I don’t get all worked up over it?)

You were supposed to smile at New Year’s and cry at funerals.

She was fed up seeing people switch modes as if with a switch or dial.

She flipped through the channels for a bit.

The talk shows were more than she could handle today, so she kept changing the channel to escape them, but that mostly left shopping shows and old dramas.

After settling on a satellite broadcast animal show, she saw an enormous polar bear mercilessly attacking a family of seals. She was taken aback. She had been expecting footage of frolicking kittens or puppies. She wasn’t looking for the bloody and gory reality of nature right now!!

“What are you doing, Misaka-saaan? Why wouldn’t you go for a safe worldwide cruise show?”

That girl returned, looking exasperated.

But why was Shokuhou Misaki so familiar with TV on weekday mornings?

“Are you really a middle schooler?”

“If you’re trying to imply I’m an old lady, I will hit you.”

Something was sitting next to the TV.

At first, Mikoto thought it was a piece of Japanese-style artwork meant to help set the mood.

“Wait…” she said without thinking.

They already had a memorial tablet ready.

At first, Mikoto was confused who it was for. Because the name on it was a dharma name.

“I always thought the name was meant to be symbolic in some way.”

“In Academy City, they apparently have a website that automatically assigns one. Y’know, by tweaking a program ability meant to come up with a pet name if you can’t come up with one yourself.”

Did this city not have the rule where it only counted if it came from an important abbot?

Of course, it seemed like Academy City’s monks were part-timers who also worked as entertainers.

===Part 7===

Inside the District 10 prison, a monitor displayed Anti-Skill officer and high school teacher Yomikawa Aiho as she gave a report.

“The funeral ended without issue.”

“I see.”

“The hearse has left for the crematorium. Here, we’re holding an abbreviated version of the opening ceremony. You’re closer to the crematorium actually.”

The crematorium was in the same district, but that simple fact was far from the new Board Chairman’s mind.

It didn’t feel real.

(Accept his death? Why am I the one saying that shit?)

He had thought he would feel rage when standing on the verge of the death. But now that that line had been crossed, he was supposed to shake off all that emotion? Accelerator couldn’t say anything. Was he facing this like he should, or had his senses simply numbed over?

He couldn’t afford to forget what human warmth felt like.

No matter how many he saved with lifeless methods, he would only be retreading the path of Academy City’s former mistakes.

So what should he do?

Was it more human to let his emotions explode and destroy everything in sight?

“…”

Academy City’s #1 monster looked up.

He couldn’t see heaven there. Only a ceiling made of a special thick armor.

The prison had taken considerable damage from the attack by one of those Transcendents. This room was actually a secondary cell he had been moved to. Still, the white monster hadn’t died. Even though there were plenty of reasons for him to be killed. Was this just how life was?

“What was that bastard thinking dying before the villain,” he muttered.

Death was impartial.

It could visit anyone at any time, no matter how good a person they were, and they would lose their life.

“Aneri.”

An electronic beep.

Of rejection.

Apparently someone else had administrator privileges there. The new Board Chairman didn’t particularly care.

“Qliphah Puzzle 545.”

“Yes, yes. Kee hee hee.”

In that sense, the artificial demon was a lot less trouble.

And she also knew a lot about the world ''beyond'' science.

The #1 had just one question.

“Where is the person who did it?”

===Part 8===

A cold rain was falling.

The ugly rain could not become snow, but it rejected all human warmth while it naturally permeated the city of cutting-edge scientific technology.

The rain stealing heat from the entire city was impartial.

Even in the back alleys.

The countless raindrops falling from the heavens mercilessly located everyone, even a silent and unsteady girl, and soaked them.

She was tall. She wore black leather belts wrapped complexly around her naked body, making her stand out even in Academy City, which was isolated from the outside world.

Her long wavy blonde hair was plastered to her white skin.

She didn’t seem to have even the willpower to brush it away.

“…”

Alice Anotherbible.

She looked up at the sliver of rainy sky visible between the buildings.

And she didn’t move.

She had known that boy would die before they even met.

She had announced it herself.

But he had left the track of survival so that he could save the lives of others.

''“You will die.”

''“That doesn’t change my answer.”

She had seen the boy rushing toward death.

She had thought he might seek help at some point.

But he hadn’t.

''“So fight me!! Alice Anotherbible!!!”

Kamijou Touma had rejected her once.

She had lost sight of herself and resurrected Christian Rosencreutz as she was told.

''“Hold on. You don’t mean…?”

Yes, he had been shaken when he first learned he was doomed to die.

But he had still ultimately chosen the lives of others.

The doomed boy had stuck to his way of life and finally brought Alice Anotherbible back to her senses.

''“…I…”

''“I don’t…”

''“I don’t want to see anyone suffering from even more misfortune than me!! You got a problem with that!?”

He wasn’t coming back.

Alice Anotherbible could easily twist the world to her liking, but that was exactly why the person she had killed could not return. No matter what.

This was the result.

Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the rest of the Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal were no longer here.

That meant Alice Anotherbible was no longer a fearsome leader.

She could trick people into seeing a form of beauty by taking death and violence to their extremes, but that was meaningless without those extremes. Being second best or lower simply made you a troublemaker.

A scratchy voice spoke.

The girl who had lost everything whispered into the emptiness.

“Tea…cher.”

===Part 9===

The final moment had arrived.

They would never see Kamijou Touma’s face again.

The coffin was already closed.

Although it was a Japanese-style coffin, so there was a small double door open over the face. That small square space seemed to be gradually cut away from the world at large.

“…”

Mikoto reached out her hand a bit and touched his cheek. Softly.

“?”

“Wait. You’d feel bad if you messed up his mortuary makeup at the very end, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, right. It’s just…”

“What?”

Mikoto had no answer for Shokuhou’s quizzical gaze.

Meanwhile, the #5 Queen made her move. She raised a hand to the side of her head and lifted her veil before lowering her head toward the little window.

The instant before she kissed his cheek, Mikoto elbowed her in the side.

Sharply.

“No touching.”

“Ubwogh!? I-I really don’t see what’s so wrong with wishing him good fortune in the next life!!”

“You wouldn’t want to mess up his mortuary makeup, would you? Besides, you’re wearing lipstick.”

Misaka Mikoto had grown up in Academy City where science was everything, but she still knew it would be inappropriate to have him cremated with a lipstick mark on his face.

Each of them wasn’t given much time to say their goodbyes.

Mikoto and Shokuhou moved away.

Aogami Pierce placed a small rectangular object on his close-eyed friend’s pillow.

It was a smartphone.

Fukiyose frowned.

“Are you really allowed to put that in there?”

“Kami-yan was so happy when he got his first smartphone…”

An employee might get mad at him if they found out, but after burning any gold teeth and artificial bones along with the body, they apparently retrieved the rare earths. …And they wouldn’t know what materials had been included in some rich person’s expensive pure gold accessory.

The unsuccessful entertainer who worked part-time as a monk began speaking into the microphone he held.

“Now, everyone, let us once more pray for the deceased’s fortune in the next life. It is now time to say our final goodbye.”

===Part 10===

And.

And.

And then.

===Part 11===

…

…

…

Kamijou Touma silently opened his eyes in a small, dark space.

Yes.

The pointy-haired boy opened his eyes.

“?”

(Where am I? I can’t tell, but this definitely isn’t that artificial hell. Then am I alive again? Did Kingsford actually keep her prom-)

“Bweh, cough! Cough, hack!!”

Now wasn’t the time to be getting emotional.

Something was caught deep in his throat. He desperately coughed until he got a clump of something out. It was too dark to see what it was. He groped around the cramped space until he found something. For whatever reason, a phone was with him in the small box.

That gave him a light.

He tried to open his eyes to see, but something was wrong with his vision.

“Ow!! My eyes hurt!? What the hell!? You’re kidding, right!? Is there something in them!?”

He hesitantly pinched his eyelid and used the other hand’s index finger to feel around. It was big. He pulled something larger than a 100 yen coin from under his eyelids. He checked with with the LED light and found it was absorbent cotton heavy with his tears. He shuddered.

And the thing that had been in his throat appeared to be some kind of cloth.

Maybe to keep his tongue from falling back into his throat or maybe to keep insects from getting inside his body? He hadn’t known they did all that at funerals.

And something else gradually dawned on him.

This was not a hospital morgue. He had thought it was one of those locker-like storage spaces seen in TV dramas, but it wasn’t. He didn’t feel chilly at all.

That only left one possibility.

“Wait…”

He was lying face up in a space too small to move much. He smelled wood and flowers all around him. The ceiling? He sensed the wood less than 30cm away. Relying on the phone light, he tried pressing on it with his palm and the resistance vanished sooner than expected. Oh? It wasn’t heavy at all?

No.

He had only opened a small double door that had already been there. About 20cm across.

“Wait, wait, wait…”

The space beyond the little window was dark too. And it smelled of metal. After all the cheap meals he had cooked in his dorm, he recognized what he was seeing.

That was a fish grill.

Except this one was large enough to cook an entire human being.

“Ubwahhhhhh!! Does that mean I’m in the crematorium!!?”

Understanding your circumstances was important.

Because now the squeezing at his heart was so much stronger.

Did that mean the wooden box he was inside was a coffin!? He pushed on the actual cover with his palms to try and get out this time, but…oh, no. It wasn’t opening. It didn’t appear to be nailed shut. It would open upwards a few centimeters before something stopped it. Apparently the cremation chamber itself was short, so the coffin door was hitting the top.

Wait, did that mean he couldn’t get out?

If he stayed here like this, he had a strong feeling they really would ignite the chamber!

“Help!! I know it’s way too late for this, but Kamijou Touma is alive, so you all need to waiiiiiiiit!!”

He screamed with all his might…but did it do any good?

There was no reaction.

He wasn’t even certain his voice could be heard outside the chamber. He had never been to a crematorium before, but didn’t the cremation chambers have thick metal walls? And he was Academy City’s Mr. Misfortune. It was looking more likely he was going to go unnoticed and be roasted due to this careless mistake. A lot more likely.

“Th-th-th-the ph-ph-phone! I need to call someone outside and- mgwah!? Why doesn’t it have a signal!? Because the walls are so thick!? Is this stone and metal cremation chamber blocking the signal!?”

It didn’t look like he could count on any help from outside.

He would have to crawl out on his own.

However, the space was so small. It didn’t seem like the coffin lid would be able to open inside the cremation chamber, but that just meant he needed to get creative.

“Hnh!!”

Specifically, he moved to one side of the rectangular coffin to shift the center of gravity. Then he rolled up onto the side. Like rolling around in a giant ball, he tilted the entire coffin over 90 degrees.

There would be more horizontal than vertical space.

He could finally push on the large lid and escape the coffin…or so he thought before a powerful blow hit his back. He choked hard and then realized he had fallen off of something. The ceiling had seemed so low because the coffin had been sitting on something like a stretcher. The metal scent was a lot stronger now. Still, the place was dark and he knew he was inside a giant fish grill that would burn his flesh and bones using city gas. Even now, he assumed the emotional goodbyes were solemnly approaching their climax. If he waited around, he would meet the same fate as a saury prepared by a childhood friend who was a terrible cook.

(How long until they ignite it? Damn, I can’t hear any voices from outside!!)

It might happen an hour from now, but it also might happen a minute from now.

Either way, he was done for once it happened.

Kamijou aimed the phone around and discovered steel pipes as thick as his thumb running near the low ceiling. He chose not to imagine what the black soot he saw was primarily composed of. In fact, he worked very hard to not think about it. The shape of the place was indeed similar to a fish grill. That meant it had a few gas sprayers and spark plugs.

(I’m screwed if those work properly.)

“!! Oh, hell!!”

Or to put it another way, he had to destroy them if he wanted to live! He grabbed at whatever he could and yanked until a pipe came away with a dull snap.

He couldn’t celebrate yet.

A horrible stench stabbed into his nose.

A threat familiar to anyone who used a kitchen clutched at his heart. Even more strongly than before.

(Wait a second. Is that city gas?)

“Gwohhhhh!! Doesn’t that mean this chamber is filling with gas, even if it isn’t burning!? Then I’m going to suffocate and die anyway!!”

He had no idea if he had increased or decreased his time limit.

Flailing about wasn’t going to help.

He knew what he had to do. He had to get out of here. No matter what.

There was nothing like a chimney. He assumed it did have an exhaust vent somewhere, but he couldn’t find it with his phone’s light. Was there a small hole hidden in some gap somewhere? At the very least, it didn’t seem likely he could sneak out through a duct like an action movie star.

That left only one option.

The only exit was the door he had been shoved in through.

“Kh.”

(But will it open? I don’t know much about funerals, but aren’t cremation chamber doors made of really thick metal!?)

He desperately shined his phone’s LED lights that way…and didn’t see a knob. In fact, he was surprised to find the back of the metal door was covered in stuff. A few metal panels and joints fit together complexly.

That was probably the mechanism that allowed the door to be opened by a large lever on the outside.

Did it look like one big panel on the outside, but this opening and closing gimmick was hidden on the back?

Which meant…

“Can I break it open by kicking at this stuff?”

…The problem was the flammable city gas beginning to fill the interior of the chamber.

If he waited, he would definitely suffocate and die, but what if two metal pieces collided and produced a spark?

Accept it.

Trust in hope.

Giving into fear will only mean suffocating.

“Open.”

He had to do it.

Even if he was terrified and even if his heart was raising a scream so soon after beginning to beat once more.

Kamijou Touma repeatedly slammed his heel against the complex stopper on the back of the cremation chamber door.

“Opeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!”

===Part 12===

It came from within.

The metal door was kicked down with a loud roar.

Everyone gasped.

There was a voice.

''Today is my January birthday.

:''Today is the day I was born.

::''I am the star of this wonderful birthday.

''Today is my January birthday.

He was dressed in burial clothes.

A triangle of cloth was tied to the forehead below his pointy hair.

It was definitely him who crawled on out.

And he spoke.

“Hi there, everyone! Sorry if I surpri-”

“Eeeek, a zombie! It’s going to infect us all with who knows what!!!”

[[File:GT Index v12 BW1.png|thumb]]

They didn’t even let him finish his sentence.

Tears welled up in the eyes of the corner-of-the-classroom boy who didn’t get to be the star even after coming back from the dead.

Panic and pandemonium were already setting in.

Of course they were.

Based on his phone’s screen, it hadn’t just been a few minutes since he died. Anyone would be terrified if someone who’s heart had long since stopped beating suddenly got back up.

(I’m grateful you brought me back to life, but couldn’t you have worked a little faster, Kingsford!?)

“Abababawawa, no, no, it’s true I, Kamijou Touma, died, but I’m alive again, and I mean, technically today isn’t my birthday, but can’t you please give me a more peaceful reaction along the lines of what you would do if a cardiac massage work-”

“Quiet, everyone! Quiet!! Take deep breaths to calm yourselves and stay where you are. Now, what were you doing in there? Who are you!?”

The extremely part-time monk was shouting into his microphone.

Then Kamijou heard a strange mechanical sound.

Someone was coming.

These people were wearing shiny silver armor that covered them from head to toe.

No, were those powered suits?

“Is that the exceptional remains!?”

“Commence incineration.”

They were holding something at their hips.

They looked like a fire fighter’s hose, but not quite.

A small lighter-sized flame flickered in front of the nozzle.

“Flamethrowers!!?”

How well prepared were they!?

Why did they have a unit like this already on standby? Did corpses have a habit of getting back up in this city!?

Anyway, he couldn’t let himself be roasted after just narrowly escaping that fate.

He had no choice but to run barefoot out of the crematorium.

“Damn!!”

Kamijou Touma threw open the frosted glass window and climbed out.

Frigid rain was falling outside.

''And the girl who pointed at me and called me a zombie right after I came back to life – that was Fukiyose, wasn’t it? Kamijou-san isn’t about to forget that!!

===Part 13===

Kamijou Touma wasn’t the only one in trouble.

Aogami Pierce, Fukiyose Seiri, and the others left in the crematorium were in no position to just stare.

The situation was on the move.

“Whoa!?”

They heard a “fwoosh!!” sound.

It came from right outside the window. More people in powered suits were spraying something out of large canisters. It was reminiscent of spraying agrochemicals on a field, but these weren’t pesticides. The outside of the window soon grew thick and translucent.

Aogami Pierce couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Is that a plastic glue? That’s like a more impressive version of the security sheets you put on windows.”

“With that, they can quarantine a location in less than 5 minutes. Now I doubt any person or any bacteria or viruses can get in or out.”

At field hospitals, thick plastic sheets were used to demarcate a space while air curtains controlled the air currents, but was this a more advanced version of that?

Then Fukiyose commented on the a phrase she had used that had caught her attention.

“Any person…?”

“A corpse just woke up and ran off. That qualifies as an emergency in my book. Did it not occur to you that we’re trapped inside here now?”

But the reaction had been too quick.

Kamijou Touma’s remains getting up and fleeing the crematorium was certainly a shock, but not even a few minutes had passed since then.

That speed was only possible if those people had been on standby to begin with.

It meant they must always monitor the cremations of anyone who had died under “suspicious circumstances”.

“(If they were this well prepared, does this kind of thing happen from time to time in Academy City?)”

“(Anything can happen here. I mean, this city creates superhuman Level 5s.)”

None of it sounded real.

Kamijou Touma had gotten up. That much was true.

But what exactly had happened? Saying a mystery virus was responsible sounded plausible enough, but it lacked the weight of reality. That was the same as saying ghosts were actually plasma. Smugly explaining that in a dark abandoned building did nothing to put your mind at ease.

And that aside…

“What happens to us now?” asked Aogami.

“Trying to move from here could be dangerous.”

That she didn’t scoff at his question meant Fukiyose was aware they were trapped in here.

This wasn’t like daydreaming about fighting terrorists during a boring class.

The entire building was sealed off from the outside by thick plastic walls. A mop or a metal bat weren’t going to break through the windows. Even a gun probably wouldn’t be enough. A specialized gas proof door had been set up as the only way in or out, but the powered suits were gathered around it.

And someone was loudly approaching from there.

At some point the number of powered suits had grown past 10.

“Quiet, everyone! We are Bio Secure!”

This person also wore a powered suit.

Maybe anything seemed suspicious when viewed in that light, but it felt like they were intentionally making themselves indistinguishable from each other. Like robbers in masks.

“Your movement will be temporarily restricted, but please do not worry. Once we ensure you are safe, you will be released, so I ask that you cooperate and avoid causing a disturbance.”

He “asked that” they cooperate, but he showed no sign of waiting for a yes or no response from them.

He was actually telling them to resist at their peril.

He made it clear who was in charge here.

How were they supposed to “not worry” when he was wearing a fully-sealed powered suit and equipped with a flamethrower? It was written on his hidden face that there was likely something invisible in the air and that his team would be fine.

“W-wait…” protested a pale-faced crematorium worker.

Even the adults didn’t know what this was.

That only worried Aogami Pierce and Fukiyose Seiri more. And they doubted Komoe-sensei was going to be much help here.

“Wait a second! What is happening? The paperwork said nothing about infectious disease, but are we safe? And do we have permission to continue running this facility!?”

“We are not authorized to answer that. Chief ''Kihara Goukei'' has yet to arrive, but she will explain everything once she does. Hold your questions until then.”

A sound a lot like steam followed.

The powered suits were tossing things into a large rectangular glass vat full of powerful acid. They were quite casual about it, probably because the splashing liquid and smoke wouldn’t harm them anymore.

Those were the bouquets and Kamijou Touma’s possessions prepared for the funeral.

They of course didn’t ask anyone’s permission first.

It had been through a screen, but during the funeral Aogami Pierce had seen the tearful face of that father enraged over his son’s death. The items he and his wife were meant to receive were all being heartlessly dissolved.

Even if this had been a performance put together by professionals, the sight seemed to fully reject the gentle atmosphere of the day.

His breathing was shallow and a cold sweat wouldn’t stop pouring down his brow, but Aogami may still not have accurately grasped the threat. If he had, he could easily have collapsed from hyperventilation.

If he couldn’t take advantage of his own ignorance here, he was in trouble.

His instincts told him so.

What was going to happen to them?

Would they be infected?

If they were, would that be done to them too?

But the situation was advancing whether he liked it or not.

A short distance away, one powered suit was speaking to another.

“What is it?”

“Chief Kihara Goukei has arrived.”

===Part 14===

The dead had come back to life.

Did that qualify as a good thing or a bad thing?

And this was Academy City.

If he was captured, he would either be sent to a lab to be soaked in formalin or he would be directly roasted by flamethrower.

Either way…

“I’m screwed!! My life is over if I’m caught!!”

Kamijou Touma ran outside in the frigid rain.

His burial clothes, which were one step removed from being a Halloween costume, did nothing to keep out the cold. And he was barefoot. Keep in mind it was January. Being stuck out in the rain dressed like this would kill him within an hour of coming back to life!!

“Ahh, brrr. There aren’t even any soaked girls caught in the sudden summer downpour. Winter sucks. There’s nothing at all good about being wet in this season.”

The city had been badly damaged.

The cumulative effect of the battles against Anna Sprengel, Christian Rosencreutz, and Alice Anotherbible really had left it close to collapse. The repairs could not keep up, so construction scaffolding and soundproofing sheets could be seen all over the place.

Kamijou Touma had received that same deadly force with his flesh-and-blood body.

That explained why it was so unusual for him to be alive.

He heard a groaning “gashunk!!” sound.

That was the sound of a powered suit’s artificial muscles operating.

“Dammit, they’re so fast!!”

Powered suit legs could run at 40-50km/h without the help of wheels or a car motor.

An ordinary human couldn’t hope to escape them while running along a wide street on foot.

“Kh.”

They had nearly caught up.

The powered suit’s thick fingers were approaching the back of his neck.

“Damn!!”

He clicked his tongue and changed direction.

He slid across the wet pavement, slipped below a soundproofing sheet, and tumbled into the construction site for repairs on a nearby building.

Sites like this could be found just about anywhere thanks to the battles against powerful foes like Anna Sprengel, Christian Rosencreutz, and Alice Anotherbible.

He heard the snapping of breaking metal.

After the powered suit’s thick fingers had found only air, it had easily torn through the exterior barricade made of soundproofing sheets and metal panels.

It worked like the building demolition beaks attached to the end of a mechanical arm.

A hit from that would smash his body apart even if it only caught on his clothes a little.

“Why aren’t we authorized to use our flamethrowers!?”

“Ask Chief Kihara Goukei. She’s the boss of Bio Secure, not us.”

He heard some terrifying voices from behind, but he couldn’t just stop.

The sounds of thick metal tearing apart continued.

The pursuing powered suits didn’t bother going around or climbing over obstacles. They would shove a stack of pipes aside with a single arm or tackle through a forest of erected steel beams, causing an entire half-repaired building to tilt.

Getting caught in any of that would be the end of Kamijou.

He couldn’t stay here in the construction site.

“Eek!!”

The loud and heavy sounds of bending metal filled the air.

Two of the rapidly-moving powered suits appeared to have collided.

“Y-your suit’s lost integrity!”

“Don’t worry about me and go on ahead! Hurry!!”

“Stop acting all heroic while brandishing flamethrowers! It’s terrifying!” shouted Kamijou, bristling as he fled.

In their minds, they weren’t ganging up on a victim to bully him – they seemed to truly see themselves as fighting to protect Academy City. Which meant they would not compromise or let their guard down. But so what? Someone who could emotionally kill a stranger without second thought was a terrible person in Kamijou’s book.

Kamijou spotted a slope leading underground, so he raced down it. He was expecting an underground mall, but was instead hit by a mass of malodorous air. He had apparently wandered into a culvert where a river ran below the city.

On the floor, he found large wireless communication equipment, professional-looking tools, and a long power cable leading somewhere.

Apparently repairs were underway here as well.

He was afraid of giving away his position, but it was dark in here. Missing a step and falling into the winter river would be no laughing matter, so he suppressed the fear and switched on the LED light.

“The all-purpose smartphone really is one of humanity’s greatest inventions.”

He wished he could just call Anti-Skill and have them come to the rescue, but he got the impression he couldn’t trust in the grownups’ systems.

Where was the exit?

Was heading outside even his best option?

Or should he hide out in this labyrinthine underground structure until his pursuers had moved on?

And how many minutes would he have to wait until he considered that plan a success?

He had too many unanswered questions.

Behind him, he heard the “gashunk, gashunk” of machines operating. Were they still after him!?

(But they’re not moving as fast as before. Did they not have night vision gear because it’s still daytime, or are they afraid of falling in the water and sinking like a rock?)

He thought he would pass out from the fear if he didn’t force his thoughts in a positive direction.

He had to keep running and escape.

It was all so unfair.

He was moments away from death, but for some reason he found laughter spilling from his lips as he ran away soaking wet.

He couldn’t stop.

“Ha ha ha…”

He was afraid of dying.

Of course he was.

Because no matter what anyone might say, Kamijou Touma was alive!!

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!”

He was alive.

He had never felt so aware of the life within him.

He wasn’t a ghost or a zombie or anything like that.

Being human was such a wonderful feeling!!

Although if Anna Kingsford saw this, she might hold a hand to her head in exasperation or she might bring her fist down on his head.

(Still…)

Chief Kihara Goukei.

They had used the name Kihara.

Was it the same Kihara?

In addition to the business with Kihara Kagun, he was pretty sure he had heard that name associated with the incident where he first met Alice Anotherbible. That operation had been meant to clean up the dark side lurking in Academy City’s shadows, but outside influence had twisted it into a great tragedy. Many people had died. But…they were still there.

“Does that mean that dark side thing is still alive and kicking after all that? Dammit!”

He heard an ominous roar.

That was the sound of flames sucking in oxygen.

He looked back while running and his eyes widened. A fireball of a flame flickered in the air.

That was the tip of a flamethrower.

“A-are you kidding me!?”

Even though it branched off every which way, this was still an enclosed space. Bio Secure might survive thanks to their thick powered suits and oxygen supplies, but Kamijou would either be instantly fried or would suffocate with his lungs roasted.

(I thought that Kihara person wasn’t letting them use those!)

It was too late to complain now.

And maybe it had been wrong to count on the enemy’s situation remaining unchanged.

Without hesitation, the flamethrower nozzle aimed his way spewed an oxidant and a jelly-like liquid combustible material.

And a moment later…

It exploded.

“Wahgyahhh!!!”

Kamijou was soaked with sweat as he leaped down a different branching path.

What?

He was still alive, but what was that!?

There had been flames, but that wasn’t right. If the flamethrower had been functioning normally, he knew he should have been wrapped in flames himself. The powered suit had done something wrong. Because it was the pursuer who had ended up on fire.

White fire.

What kind of explosion was that?

It had seemed like something at the powered suit’s feet had exploded immediately after the flamethrower was activated.

(Was that acetylene gas used for welding!?)

That special flammable gas was used to create the ultra-high temperature flames needed to melt and combine reinforcing steel. The powered suit appeared to be designed to withstand the heat of a flamethrower, but an explosion of that stuff at such close range had to have damaged it at least some.

Kihara Goukei was it?

This may have been part of the reason why the powered suits’ boss had banned them from using their flamethrowers. With propane, city gas, and more, the densely populated city contained a surprising amount of flammables and explosives. The recovery had finally begun after the many battles. There was even the possibility of unexploded shells or missiles lying around.

“Pant, gasp!!”

Anyway, Kamijou Touma was alive.

If he continued playing tag with these powered suits, he would be killed. If he was going to escape, it had to be now while they were panicked over their own screw up.

Bio Secure(?), or whatever they were called, didn’t seem worried inside the steel-melting flames.

He felt their gaze on him.

And heard a straining sound.

They were having trouble, but they only had to wait until their suits managed to reboot inside the flames. Kamijou know he couldn’t destroy them by going on the offensive. Once their self-scans and error recovery was complete, he would be out of options. He wouldn’t be able to escape.

So move your legs.

The culvert was one step removed from a sewer. He was worn out from all the strenuous exercise, but he wasn’t at all inclined to lean against the wall. He used his phone’s LED light to walk down a small side path in the dark culvert that stank of sludge and he eventually found a small door.

Maybe it was for work access and maybe it was an emergency exit, but on the other side, narrow stairs led up toward the surface.

“Wheeze, wheeze…”

He was right back out in the rainy world.

He honestly didn’t feel at all like he had escaped.

He was certain the flamethrower-wielding powered suits would find him again soon enough.

Was coming back from the dead really so difficult?

This was nothing like the emotional reactions to a miraculous experience he had been expecting.

(But what do I do now? If I’m supposed to be dead, my dorm room might be gone. And it doesn’t look like anyone I know will be any help.)

“?”

He spotted a camera-equipped security robot and instinctively moved from the main road to an alley to hide.

He felt like he was moving further and further from the sun.

At this rate, was he going to find himself crawling underneath a flower pot in the schoolyard?

“Also.”

Being dead had scared him.

Finding some way of returning to life had been the only thing on his mind.

But.

Could it be?

“Does no one want a world with me in it?”

He hung his head.

It really hurt.

Then again, he was only a high school boy. He wasn’t some important Buddhist priest whose remains would be preserved after death. So maybe there just wasn’t anyone who wanted to see him again badly enough to deal with something as bizarre as this…

He had died and come back.

Being killed by Alice Anotherbible had complicated matters this time, but he had actually already experienced something similar a few times with full-power Othinus and Good, Old Mary…but was it just different once the pieces on the board had made it as far as the funeral? Instead of just physically dying, his death had been socially accepted this time. It took dying for him to realize death happened in stages.

A whirring motor sound passed by overhead.

“Eek!?”

Now wasn’t the time to be waxing philosophical.

Kamijou released a quick shriek and then hid below an air conditioner attached to the wall in the narrow alley. The flying drone passed by. The dark side was supposed to have declined and they could still do all this? He really didn’t want to be found by the adults right now. They did have flamethrowers after all!

And that hadn’t just been a scout.

It wasn’t harmless.

It was very different from one of these drum-shaped security robots.

Specifically, an object the size of a rugby ball was hanging down from it. He couldn’t be certain, but he was pretty sure that was an anti-tank rocket.

If it had noticed him and fired that, he would have been blown to pieces along with this corner of the alley. That 8000yen-a-pop explosive was enough to fully change the meaning of the electronic device.

It was over once he was caught.

Kamijou Touma desperately held his breath.

Maybe he was doing something incredibly stupid. After all, it wasn’t a living creature. Staying still behind cover like this might not matter depending on what kinds of sensors it was using to scan the surface.

The next 30 seconds seemed to scorch his heart.

And that was assuming his sense of time was accurate.

The drone indifferently flew off. Like nothing had happened.

In that final moment, its motion seemed somehow human, so it was possible it had shifted from programmed flight to remote manual control.

Regardless, that meant the threat had passed…right?

“Phew…”

Thanks to that assumption, it caught him completely by surprise.

While all his focus was overhead, he heard a noise from straight ahead.

A quiet footstep.

Someone was there.

The person was frozen in place, staring wide-eyed at him.

She was tall and beautiful. Her long wavy blonde hair was wet with rain and her skinny body was tightly bound by black leather belts, making for a strange manner of dress even for Academy City.

She was a Transcendent.

Alice Anotherbible.

She was frozen in apparent surprise, widened eyes directed his way.

“Y-you can…see me???”

The idiot had so lost his faith in humanity he had to ask that in a trembling voice.

Tears welled up in the corners of the girl’s eyes.

Large ones.

The cold rain was still falling, but these drops were noticeably different and carried body heat.

“T-””

She was stiff and trembling.

And…

“Teacher!!”

[[File:GT Index v12 BW2.png|thumb]]

She spread her arms and leaped at him.

Her momentum was too much for him, so Kamijou Touma toppled back onto his rear.

Yes, he could feel her.

Her hair wet with the cold rain, her skin, her sweet scent, and her high-pitched voice piercing into his ears. Sensations the dead could never experience bewildered his senses and stabbed directly into his brain. Kamijou Touma was alive, including those brains.

…I thought I would never see you again.

His heart had stopped, his brain’s neural network had been shredded, and he had fully died.

Saying he would return to life had been an absurd fantasy.

Yet he had done it.

He had returned alive from hell.

However, he didn’t deserve the credit there.

That hell had been an artificial one that Christian Rosencreutz had created to resurrect himself and Anna Kingsford had hijacked control of it. And she hadn’t hesitated to hand the resurrection ticket to Kamijou Touma.

He had been saved every step of the way.

The pointy-haired boy hadn’t accomplished anything on his own. Those true experts had done it for him.

They had taught him what it means to save people.

But.

He hadn’t done the wrong thing.

He had finally found something in this half-destroyed world that convinced him of that.

“You’re alive, you’re here, ohh, the girl can touch you, teacher is really here. Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

No matter how cold the rain was, he could feel this girl’s warmth beyond it.

Returning to life was meaningless?

Don’t be ridiculous.

There was a girl here letting him experience something he never would have if he hadn’t returned to the world of the living.

“Thank goodness… Teacher, you’re breathing, you’re alive. The girl, uh, the girlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!!!”

She couldn’t even get her words out.

Still slumped down, Kamijou Touma placed a hand on sobbing Alice’s head.

He could touch her.

He could influence things.

He could save a single crying girl.

The pointy-haired boy was undoubtedly alive here.

“Heh…”

What an awful day.

He had taken so long to return to life that now he was seen as the living dead. They seemed to think he was infected with some kind of Academy City something, so a group of adults with flamethrowers was after him.

But.

Nevertheless…

“Coming back to life…was definitely the right move.”

He could finally say that.

For today at least, he could smile.

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume12 Chapter4

2025-04-27T04:51:47Z

Churronzon:

==Chapter 4: Those who Resist the Result – Ultra_VS_Wisdom.==

===Part 1===

An uninteresting student dorm for an ordinary school stood in District 7.

Five people faced each other on its 7th floor hallway.

Kamijou Touma and Transcendent Alice Anotherbible.

Stiyl Magnus and Magic Gods Nephthys and Niang-Niang.

An unthinkable clash was beginning in that completely ordinary setting.

Magic Gods and a Transcendent.

Both had stepped beyond the bounds of humanity. The higher ups of the Anglican Church and Roman Catholic Church couldn’t have predicted they would clash here.

The first to speak was Nephthys.

“Transcendent. We had left your divine school play alone, but you seem to have learned to talk big since we last saw you.”

“Magic Gods? Why should the girl listen to people who were born with nothing?”

It only occurred to Kamijou after he heard that.

Alice really was different. Stiyl had chosen the path of magic to resist an uncooperative reality. Even Niang-Niang and Nephthys had to be the same even if the scale was different. But Alice Anotherbible was something else. She was on the magic side, but she was one with ''talent''.

“You don’t get to take things from other people just because you don’t have them. This is a problem you magicians fundamentally do not understand. Even the girl searched for money when she wanted a snack, but you magicians can’t do that.”

“You’re the one that stole from us,” said a voice. Magic God Nephthys’s somehow dry voice. “Transcendents are those who name themselves gods…or who want to be called gods. Meanwhile, we Magic Gods are those who others call gods. We’re similar to you, but fundamentally different. You aspire to be an existing god and work hard to try and reach that position, but we improve ourselves until we are referred to as new gods. There’s no need to actually fight – the result is already plain to see, don’t you think?”

Transcendent vs. Magic God.

Since both sides were extraordinary, Kamijou didn’t have a good sense of their relative powers or the threats they posed, but maybe that was one way of looking at it.

Except Alice Anotherbible also spoke.

Calmly.

“Are you sure about that?”

One of the brown beauty’s eyebrows twitched.

“Maybe you’re the originals and maybe you’re gods, but did you really have the resolve and responsibility to be known as gods?”

Nephthys in particular was a collection of the slaves and servants buried alive as pyramid grave goods. She was a Magic God who had been ''accidentally'' created by the mixture of a great magical device and many lives.

Alice had messed with the world without any kind of plan.

Kamijou highly doubted she had researched the details in advance.

But he knew that if anyone could draw the lucky card right when she needed it, it was her.

“You’re nothing more than the best humans. You wanted power surpassing that of a god, but you weren’t prepared to actually become a god and look after everyone. So the creation of all those new gods didn’t actually improve the world any. Just like you’re hunting down teacher for your own reasons now.”

“You talk big for a lab rat who was simply abducted and had her body altered.”

“Maybe so, but the girl and the other Transcendents did want to save people. Shoving all of that onto CRC was about the worst way of going about it, but that was our goal.”

It was looking like they were going to start fighting on their own at this rate.

And the boy who was neither a Transcendent nor a Magic God turned to look at another human.

“…”

Yes, Stiyl Magnus.

Kamijou Touma had the strength to do so now. When Alice Anotherbible had found the boy curled up in the back alley, she had wept and hugged him instead of being afraid or creeped out by him. She taught him that his new life here was a good thing.

He wouldn’t let that lesson be denied.

This wasn’t about the power balance between the three major Christian factions.

He didn’t care about any confrontation between the science side and magic side.

The rules of the world the Magic Gods were so concerned about weren’t the current issue.

''He wanted to live.

''That was all.

What was wrong with the living wanting to go on living? Why should he need anyone’s permission for that!?

“You have it backwards,” spat Stiyl, reading Kamijou’s thoughts from the look in his eye. “You are supposed to be dead. So why should I need anyone’s permission to re-kill you?”

“Teacher,” said Alice.

The small girl entirely ignored Stiyl and addressed Kamijou.

Her eyes were wide and she spoke in a terribly cold way.

That was a sign she was in a bad mood.

“Alice Anotherbible is on your side. So don’t worry. The girl will blow away all of these people.”

“Oh, you will?”

Nephthys laughed and snapped her right hand’s fingers next to her face.

A scratchy sound followed.

Her shoulder on down scattered into some kind of powder and attacked like a whip.

It devoured the air, tore through the metal railing and anything else in its way, and eliminated the 10m distance between them.

Kamijou shuddered.

The vanishing of the cold rain indirectly informed him where this great power was.

“!?”

He froze with his fist still clenched.

This was like stepping out onto the road and finding a large truck bearing down on you. He could see it coming, but the shock caused him to freeze up.

He had completely misread her range.

“Don’t worry.”

Alice took a step forward.

She held her arms out front and spread them to the sides, causing a wall to tower up out of thin air. The shield was made of a sticky liquid even redder than blood.

“Attention, card soldiers!! 2, 5, and 7 of Spades, repaint the space before the girl immediately. Anything colored by that paint, even wrong-colored roses, is made a part of the queen’s forces!!”

It didn’t repel the attack exactly.

The sticky crimson wall twisted itself around, surrounded Nephthys’s attack, and painted it in its own color. “Swallowing” may have been the best description.

“My, how impressive,” whispered the bandage woman, her tone showing she was not at all impressed.

That strange goddess had no notable myths beyond the tears spilled at the funeral of a great god.

For a woman who used her clear drops as a weapon, perhaps that was all the value emotional responses carried.

“But you have now limited yourself by the condition of using paint. Admittedly, focusing on an image like that to restrict yourself is a common tactic.”

“Kh.”

“But doesn’t Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland say the white roses were being painted red, but the work was never completed? That means the more you try to cover and swallow, the longer it takes. You can only process so much at once.”

“Card soldiers!! 2, 5, and 7 of the symbol based on a sword, quickly set up a correspondence to the Sephirah related to your symbol!!!”

Alice shouted once more.

An odd straining sound started.

It wasn’t coming from the sticky paint. And Alice was clearly gritting her teeth in pain as she kept her little arms held forward.

This was out of character for the untouchable Alice Anotherbible who could break all the rules to do anything.

Did special rules take effect in a conflict between Magic God and Transcendent!?

“Alice…”

“Don’t…worry!! This is nothing!!!”

Alice shouted to silence Kamijou and leaned forward.

She was holding it back.

For him.

Perhaps she could have done this differently if she were alone and only trying to achieve victory. By distorting the scene and the world around her. But the girl was instead holding out her little hands and keeping the paint wall active so she could keep Academy City from being obliterated by the blast produced by the Magic Gods.

Come to think of it, Alice was part of the magic side, but Kamijou realized this was his first time hearing her recite an incantation.

This wasn’t about her mood or a whim.

Was she aware mistakes were not allowed here?

Maybe this was insignificant compared to the destruction she had caused in the past.

But something was clearly different.

“Tea…cher,” she groaned.

But she endured the pain she wouldn’t have had to experience if she were only interested in killing.

She had the look of someone who had moved to the back. That is, who was prepared to let someone else finish this. To reiterate, if all she wanted to do was kill, Alice could have ended this much faster on her own. It was a complete mystery whether the Magic Gods or the Transcendent would survive, so she couldn’t afford any games or detours here.

But she still left it with him.

She let him take over.

Because she didn’t want a repeat of what had happened, she had chosen to step off the stable path she could have taken. It had taken a while for her to reach this point, but she was still hesitant.

This was undeniable growth.

What could you call it but strength?

And after she demonstrated this kind of resolve, Kamijou Touma knew what he had to say.

Since he was indeed alive, he opened his mouth.

''Watch this, Christian Rosencreutz and Anna Kingsford.

''Little by little, I’ll live up to your expectations in this world.

''I will repay you!!

So.

He couldn’t just rely on Transcendent Alice Anotherbible here.

So what?

“Thanks, Alice.”

They were up against a pair of extraordinarily powerful Magic Gods and an Anglican witch-hunting magician who used coldhearted cunning to pursue his quarry.

Kamijou knew he was no match for them, but he couldn’t let that stop him.

He had to make up the difference somehow and snag a victory here.

He couldn’t get the conditions wrong.

The question wasn’t whether or not he could win. He wasn’t looking for a safe, no-risk battle against someone on the list of opponents he could defeat easily.

The ordinary boy glanced over at Alice.

…To start with, there was a reason he had to win this.

So he couldn’t fall back. No giving up.

Say it.

People died. He now knew he could be killed at any moment if he failed to work toward survival. But that was why he wasn’t allowed to compromise or give up and treat his one-and-only life like it was worthless.

He had to say it out loud.

It all began there.

He had to state the reason it was worth risking his life to fight here!!

“I really am glad I saved you.”

He heard the little girl gasp.

He didn’t wait.

Kamijou Touma once more planted his feet solidly on the narrow hallway floor.

He crouched low, kicked off his footing, and shot like an arrow toward Magic God Nephthys.

So that he could shorten Alice’s suffering by even a second.

But had he forgotten?

His opponent was a true Magic God. And she wasn’t alone.

“Nee hee hee.”

Something raced out even closer to the floor.

It almost looked like a shadow on the ground was moving rapidly around.

It was in fact Niang-Niang in her modified mini-China dress.

Several weapons shot out of her baggy sleeves all at once. No, those were the Pao-Pei made by transforming her fingers.

They spread out to the sides like wings as the Magic God sneered while seeming to soar just off the floor.

In the straight and narrow hallway, he couldn’t escape to the sides.

“Did you really think you could beat me in a direct fight!? I’m a Xian! Even without my Pao-Pei, I can run across water and kill a tiger with my bare ha- ah?”

Niang-Niang’s voice distorted unnaturally.

Without slowing at all, Kamijou Touma dove straight toward the floor. He got down on his belly, stretched his arms out front, and slid head-first with all his might.

He ended up lower.

Sliding directly on the floor, he slipped below Niang-Niang’s chin and right past her flat chest.

Kamijou grabbed her slender ankles with his outthrust hands and flipped her modified mini-China dress upside down.

Using her superhuman speed appeared to have worked against her here.

The pointy-haired boy heard rolling sounds followed by a loud crashing impact. Alice must have gotten an attack in. A lot like a kickball player kicking the ball with all their might as it rolled toward them.

Kamijou didn’t have time to look back as he used his leg strength to spring up and approach Nephthys. She had turned her own right arm into a whip, which meant she couldn’t use that arm to block. This was the best chance he was going to get.

Her slender chin was right there in front of him.

And he had his right fist.

He could reach her!!

“Owahhhh!!!”

Just as he roared, he heard an unpleasant tearing sound.

Nephthys’s face split down the center.

No, she had turned her own head into dry powder and parted it down the center to dodge Kamijou Touma’s fist. She didn’t appear to be in any pain whatsoever. Her V-split face even appeared to be laughing.

“!?”

No human could do that.

But he didn’t have time to freeze in astonishment.

It may have been a sign of Kamijou’s growth that in that moment he managed to focus on the metal door to his side rather than Magic God Nephthys’s free left hand.

It was glowing orange with heat.

And the smoker priest was nowhere to be seen!

“Tch!!”

His punch had missed, but that didn’t mean its momentum had vanished. Aiming for the location of Nephthys’s nonexistent right arm, Kamijou sent himself tumbling forward.

The front door of a dorm room melted from the inside and an unnatural mixture of red and blue flames flooded out. They melted the hallway’s metal railing like a sugar sculpture in a fire.

Stiyl had apparently used another room’s balcony to circle around.

A bewitching female silhouette twisted around within the roaring flames. Almost like she was viewing herself in a fitting room mirror.

“Hey. That hit me too.”

“As if this’ll hurt you.”

The pillar of flame was torn through from within and vanished. Nephthys languidly brushed her silver hair off her shoulder. It didn’t seem Stiyl had actually done anything. She had extinguished the flames, but not with water. It was more like putting out a fire by covering it with sand.

“Now to finish this.”

“Are you sure you want to kill him first? I get the feeling Alice will go berserk if you do.”

“''That’s far better than letting Kamijou Touma go berserk.''”

“''Good point.''”

The two of them once more turned around to quietly face Kamijou Touma.

That meant they were turning their back on ''the'' Alice Anotherbible, but they didn’t seem bothered by it.

Niang-Niang could hold her back on her own.

Was this a form of trust on Stiyl and Nephthys’s part?

“…”

(What now?)

The straight seventh floor hallway was open to the air on one side.

The one thing in Kamijou and Alice’s favor was that they had the enemy group surrounded, but this didn’t feel much like a pincer attack. Stiyl’s side had the greater numbers. With the enemy group standing back to back, it would simply mean a 1-on-1 fight and a 1-on-2 fight. Since one of them had to battle multiple opponents, Kamijou’s side had the disadvantage.

Which meant…

“Alice!! Let’s regroup!!”

“Okay!”

This was a dirt cheap student dorm. As many similar buildings had been crammed into this area as possible, so there were less than 2m between this and the next building over.

So…

“We can jump to the other side!!”

Kamijou exchanged a nod with Alice on the other side of the pincer attack and immediately placed a foot up on the railing.

He didn’t hesitate to jump.

At an angle of -30 degrees.

In other words, down.

The sole of his shoe had slipped on the rainy railing.

“Oof!”

He felt like an idiot.

He really did, but this was the seventh floor.

A truly unfortunate person would slip through the narrow 2m gap and fall to his death.

Just then, he heard a whistling.

Magic God Niang-Niang seemed to have sucked air in through the corners of her mouth.

And a moment later…

She broke through.

With a tackle.

After the briefest of delays, the entire area shook hard. What had happened? Kamijou forgot all about having been thrown out into the empty air and stiffened. He saw a hole more than a meter tall and he could see all the way through to the scenery on the other side.

That was supposed to be more than 10 thousand tons of reinforced concrete.

If he had actually jumped to the other side, he would have been killed instantly.

There was only one reason it didn’t happen anyway.

“Hnh.”

Alice.

Transcendent Alice Anotherbible.

She alone lived in the same world. If she hadn’t broken straight down through the seventh floor hallway, run through the sixth floor hallway, caught falling Kamijou in her little hands, and pulled him toward her, it would all have been over before he could even feel any pain.

She appeared to have pulled him onto the sixth floor hallway of the same building instead of going to the next building over, but he couldn’t relax yet.

Those were Magic Gods.

A mere reinforced concrete building might as well have been paper for them.

(Damn!! If the Magic Gods stay in control, I’m just delaying the inevitable here!!!)

He and Alice were now a floor below.

If they stayed on the long, straight hallway with nowhere to hide, the same thing would just happen again.

So would it be better to withdraw to the emergency stairs?

“This way, Alice!”

“No!”

He gasped.

Her little hand tugged him hard in the opposite direction. But he couldn’t exactly complain.

A moment later, something caused the entire building to tilt at an angle. There was now a meter-wide hole running through all the ceilings and floors. Kamijou had failed to visually identify the projectile.

But Alice Anotherbible had seen it.

“The Chinese steamed bun girl is going nuts, so you’ll die if you don’t consider where she’ll attack next.”

“I heard that, ‘little’ girl. Don’t just make stuff up based on nothing. Just because I’m a Xian in a modified mini-China dress doesn’t mean I walk around kneading steamed buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuns!”

Had she really, truly never done that?

Not even once???

The influence of Alice’s lazy stereotype was keeping Kamijou from recalling the details of his memories.

And it scared him that Niang-Niang’s voice had come from the ground. Was that Magic God completely unharmed after dropping six floors at faster than free fall?

“…”

He hadn’t even seen her.

That was how fast she had moved.

She was tough and strong and she kept throwing out attacks that would kill him instantly if he tried to copy them.

He had avoided death so far by cleverly beating her expectations, but he doubted he would stand a chance in a direct clash against those Magic Gods. If their fists collided, his would be crushed and torn from his arm.

He knew that for sure.

Just remember Othinus. Or High Priest.

On his own, his spirit may have broken from the moment he knew he was up against two Magic Gods. Kneeling down and offering his head to them would be better than attempting to fight back. By any reasonable standard.

But he wasn’t alone.

He had Alice Anotherbible.

That trembling girl stood right behind him.

He had given up on life, gone to a false hell, and been returned to life by two experts. And now this girl was trembling at the thought of losing that pitiful boy again.

She was the opposite of Niang-Niang.

Something poured down from the seventh floor above.

Like a dry and rough waterfall.

Like a sandstorm or thick fog, this presence seemed to have no mass yet brought to mind the fear of certain death.

The waterfall from a quicksand cave formed a bandage woman with silver hair and brown skin.

Magic God Nephthys.

Kamijou glared at her and moved to protect little Alice by his side while speaking quietly.

“I won’t die.”

“Did you think this god would grant you that wish?”

“No, but I still won’t die here!!!”

Kamijou Touma tightly clenched his right fist.

Were they 5m apart? It couldn’t be more than 7. He couldn’t reach her in a single breath, but it wouldn’t take even three steps.

That short distance away, the bandaged beauty slowly shut her eyes before opening them once more.

A clear drop spilled from her right eye.

A tear.

She could cry whenever she wanted any day of the year. She could forcibly determine her emotions like an actor.

This was bad.

Really bad.

What if Nephthys had incorporated that technique into her mental concentration for mag-

“!!!???”

(Too late!!)

He immediately swung his head to the side to negate it with his right hand.

Instead of falling to her feet, the drop floated and then tore through the air like a light speed laser bream. But it took him a few seconds after the fact to work out that was what had happened.

That woman could cry at will.

That Magic God used tears as a weapon.

Nephthys’s eyes were damp, yet she had an unnaturally gentle smile on her lips.

“Now that you’ve died, you know it’s no big deal, right?”

That wasn’t just a surface expression.

She had shifted gears.

Nephthys could instantly switch her inner emotions as if throwing a lever and now she gently whispered.

It was possible not even she knew what her true feelings were.

To Kamijou, that seemed like the price she had paid for her great power.

“We aren’t saying either life or death are superior to the other. In fact, people exist in many different states. The state of wakefulness, the state of sleep, the state of anxiety, and the state of relaxation. Living people can only learn about the state of living, but not so for us. We can even make use of the other half of existence – the state of death – which allows us to think on a level people refer to as wisdom.”

“…”

“Othinus hanged herself and High Priest was buried alive. Because those acts were necessary. What psychedelic world did you see before your eyes? Hee hee. It may have been a light show very different from the wisdom I know.”

Something seemed off.

At last, Kamijou Touma noticed something slightly wrong about what Nephthys and Niang-Niang were saying.

“But…I…”

He pondered it.

And this time, the puny boy raised his head.

To glare straight at Magic God Nephthys.

“''I didn’t take my life as part of a plan to efficiently earn more experience points''.”

That differed from the Magic Gods.

Death wasn’t a means of leveling up.

He really had thought it was all over there. But he still hadn’t given up.

He was willing to die for that girl. He wanted to save her no matter what happened to him. He had met a girl that made him certain of that. It wasn’t about how long he had known her. He had just decided turning his back on that lonely girl who couldn’t control herself would lead to a life worse than death.

These magicians would use even their own deaths to achieve their goals?

These beings had honed their minds and life forces to the point they could carry that out without hesitation?

So what?

Was that anything to brag about?

How did that make them any way superior to someone who hadn’t given up on life and was desperately trying to live in the future!?

“Hmph.”

The sweetness vanished from the bandage woman’s voice.

“Looks like you understand. You didn’t just die and vaguely experience hell. Can you absorb it faster when you have an excellent tour guide, Kamijou Touma?”

Kamijou felt something odd between his brows.

Like someone was poking their finger there.

Or like a sharp weapon.

She wasn’t actually doing anything – just glaring at him – but he felt like something sharp but invisible were piercing into his head.

This was bad.

One second from now, some kind of horrific attack was coming!!!

“Teacher!!”

His right hand felt weird.

His vision suddenly blurred.

And he was…

“On the roof?”

Was that Alice’s doing?

She appeared to have leaned over the hallway railing and then swung him straight up. He had to have flown up the height of several floors, but he found himself seated on the flat rooftop without a single bone broken. He had even been given a gentle landing. He felt like a giant kendama ball.

Blasts and tremors burst up from below. Little Alice must have been battling both Magic Gods at once.

He couldn’t just leave her there.

But he would only get in her way if he returned without a plan. What did he lack? Kamijou made full use of the brains he so rarely put to work.

(My right fist can act as a trump card, but a known trump card is useless on its own. Both Stiyl and the Magic Gods already know about Imagine Breaker. I need to set things in motion first. So I need another card that leads into using the finisher.)

Kamijou looked across the rooftop as the chilly rain fell.

For some reason, a few bikes were parked together. And instead of the ladies bikes so common on the sidewalk in front of a train station, these were clearly expensive road bikes. Who in his school rode one of those?

Could they not leave them in the ground level bicycle parking?

A quick search on his phone found an online store selling those bikes for 490 thousand yen and that was on sale for the start of the new school term.

How many dried sardines could he buy with 490 thousand yen?

“…Argh.”

Kamijou didn’t hesitate to break one with his feet. He bent it right down the middle.

The poor student showed no mercy. ''Go to hell, bourgeoisie.

A few metal bars, the chain, the gears, the rubber tires – the bike was a treasure trove, but the pointy-haired boy first grabbed a tube a little larger than a relay baton.

“A portable air pump.”

It was small, but it worked the same as the air pumps operated by raising and lowering a T-shaped handle. Which meant he could use it. He pulled out the rubber tube at the end of the air pump and collected a few thumb-sized nuts from the floor. They weren’t the right size for the small opening, but that just meant he had to use a cup to keep the air from leaking. By removing the brake lever and messing with the wires a bit, he now had a trigger.

Kamijou grabbed the junk he had constructed and aimed his arm sideways.

He held it with one hand. He pulled the lever like it was a fire extinguisher and heard a dull “bazoom!!” The satellite TV antenna attached to the metal railing broke.

The power was sufficient.

The question was if he could hit what he was aiming at. He could create a sight like on a gun, but he had no guarantee the hexagonal nuts would fly straight. The barrel wasn’t rifled and the nuts had no fletching.

Also, he didn’t have time to worry about it.

(I doubt even Alice can handle taking on two Magic Gods at the same time!)

Kamijou took a look around the cold rainy rooftop and located the stairs.

And he heard a sound.

Footsteps.

Alice was downstairs. So were Nephthys and Niang-Niang, presumably.

So.

“Hi.”

Stiyl Magnus.

The excuse of his opponent being an extraordinary Magic God didn’t work here.

For him, Kamijou had to win on his own.

“Are you ready to die so that the dead remain dead and order is preserved?”

“Shut up already,” growled Kamijou.

He had nearly frozen in the chilly rain, he had been pursued by some weird Academy City team, he had been attacked by extraordinary Magic Gods, and now he was directly facing Stiyl and his flame swords.

How many rune cards covered this building? Thousands? Tens of thousands?

If he didn’t do something, he would die here.

But that was why he felt heat pumping from his heart as if to combat the heartless rain. That was why he had legs capable of running from that weird team. And if he clenched his fist and glared, he could build the resolve to take on even the most powerful foe.

Yes.

Kamijou Touma was more alive than ever before!!

“Call me unsightly, call me selfish, call me whatever you want.”

So he threw out his hesitation.

To live was a messy thing. It wasn’t like a food sample made of shaped wax or plastic.

If it was pathetic, then so be it.

Accept it.

Accept your desire with your own will!!

“I don’t care if it’s cramped and I’m perfectly fine with a life that’s restricted by poverty and high food bills. I still want to return to that warm room with Index and everyone else!!!”

“Yeah?” said Stiyl Magnus.

He didn’t laugh.

“''Well, so do I.''”

In the end, it came down to that.

Kamijou Touma and Stiyl Magnus were risking their lives to try and obtain the exact same thing.

They strayed from their conscience.

They couldn’t always do what was right.

They weren’t special.

They weren’t chosen.

They weren’t the strongest.

They weren’t at the center of it all.

They couldn’t become Magic Gods like Nephthys and Niang-Niang. Nor could they be an irregular among the Transcendents like Alice Anotherbible. They never could.

But.

They both came to the same conclusion at the same time.

“''So what?''” “''So what?''”

Yeah, this was the guy.

Kamijou Touma had to admit it. Titles, levels, ranks, and all those things were irrelevant. His greatest and fiercest enemy was Stiyl Magnus.

===Part 2===

They stood on the spacious rooftop of one of many student dormitories.

The clash between the Transcendent and two Magic Gods below must have been heating up because the building would sometimes tremble unsteadily and it had probably started to tilt. Quite a few thumb-thick nuts lay unnaturally on the rooftop. They had likely broken away from TV antennas or the ladder up to the water tank after failing to bear the bending of the structures.

The fight had already begun.

Something produced an explosive roar.

Red and blue. A scorching flame sword burst from each of Stiyl’s hands. At more than 3000 degrees Celsius, those blades could melt steel.

“!!”

In response, the object in Kamijou’s right hand sprang up.

It was a compression gun made from a portable air pump.

“What ended the age of the sword? Guns!!”

Their head-on clash had started well before this.

Kamijou focused his mind on the trigger that resembled a fire extinguisher lever. The thumb-thick nuts tore through the air and raindrops on their way toward Stiyl’s nose.

Their course was accurate.

Yet they failed to hit.

Flames blew in from either side.

Like wings.

Stiyl moved rapidly to the left and right like he had boosters equipped. Those weren’t to attack. He had given himself extraordinary speed so that he could acquire the best attack position.

In other words…

“You can fly!?”

“Magic flight is easily accomplished, but just as easily brought down. That is a standard rule of our world, but that rule changes when your opponent can’t use an interception spell.”

Kamijou gritted his teeth and prepared to fight.

Stiyl didn’t even need to get close and strike with his flame swords.

By breaking apart the flames himself and sending them out like a flash flood, he could instantly roast Kamijou on this flat rooftop.

He could soar freely through the sky and send down powerful flames to burn anything on the surface on a whim.

He might as well have been a storybook dragon.

That thought caused an unnatural pulsing of Kamijou’s right hand.

(What do I do? Should I head back downstairs!?)

“It’s the same either way. If you escape into a hallway or room, you will have nowhere to escape when I launch a fireball inside to fill the space with flames. Or I could envelop the entire building in fla-”

''Crash!!!

A blinding white light dropped straight down from heaven to earth.

“Kh.”

Stiyl actually gasped.

What was more frightening here: the destructive power capable of causing the water tank to explode from within, or airborne Stiyl managing to twist around and dodge it at the last second?

The black-clad priest gulped and looked up at the rain clouds.

“Was it the rain? No, something isn’t right. That lightning was timed too well!!”

Kamijou agreed.

Misfortune was his default setting, so he doubted a natural disaster would save him by pure coincidence.

And…

“Hi.”

It came from the raindrops.

A familiar voice was mixed in with the noise of so many falling raindrops.

It was clear enough for Kamijou to guess who this was.

“This is a battle. And you didn’t come alone yourself, so you’re not going to claim this isn’t fair, are you?”

“Of course not!!”

Stiyl actually sneered as he made subtle left and right adjustments with his boosters to maintain his balance in midair.

And he placed a fresh cigarette in his mouth.

“That guy’s so straightforward I was getting bored anyway. A real fight to the death needs some tension. …But is that artificial rain and induced lightning tech? Looks like you’re using your scientific viewpoint to simulate the complex meteorological conditions to turn it into your plaything, but can your simulation account for this?”

Kamijou felt a chill.

He had an intensely bad feeling about this.

“I summon thee, Innocentius!!!”

''Roar!!

For an instant, the sensation of the ground vanished from below Kamijou’s feet. He thought it was only an optical illusion. A colossal flame giant had appeared, seeming to fill his entire vision and stretch up from the ground to the rooftop.

Its humanoid form vanished as it transformed into a great vortex. The orange glowing firestorm formed a blazing tower rising up toward the heavens.

“Tch!!”

The lightning shifted.

It pierced the road away from the building instead of the rooftop.

“Ha ha!! This thing has no set form. It’s all based on the number and arrangement of the runes. I prefer not to do this since it burns through so much magic power, but I won’t hesitate to use my trump card when necessary. Now, insolent science worshiper, can you accurately predict the numerical change to the air currents caused by magical flames!?”

Maybe he could eventually.

But it only mattered if he could do it now.

Stiyl rapidly zigzagged in the sky.

This was bad.

If Kamijou was overwhelmed, a single attack would take him out.

(But choosing a projectile weapon was still the right choice!!)

Kamijou suppressed his panic and focused on his compression gun.

He took aim straight up to try and pursue Stiyl’s complicated course, but then a chill ran down his spine.

He had already pulled the fire extinguisher style trigger with his full palm. The thick bullets had already been released.

Yet he trusted his senses and twisted his body with all his might.

Something exploded. A flame sword had burst. And Kamijou was nearly killed by the bullets he had released himself. It was like burying a bomb in the rocky riverside to blast the stones into the air. Stiyl had used his own explosion to knock back the flying nuts and had very nearly split open Kamijou’s skull.

The usual advantage of a projectile weapon didn’t apply against a fearsome supernatural opponent.

“Damn!!”

He had just barely avoided sudden death, but twisting around so quickly had left him in a poor position.

Stiyl had already set his feet on the rooftop and was swiftly turning toward Kamijou.

With his next sword.

Its explosion would blast Kamijou to pieces.

This was his final chance.

“Stiyl!!!”

“Don’t look for favors, my enemy!!”

He pulled the trigger.

And released the bullets.

In the poor position caused by twisting around.

He heard them slicing through the air, but that was all.

Something exploded.

Stiyl tore through the explosion to charge this way.

He accelerated further.

Had he expected that his wide-range magic flame would be negated by Imagine Breaker?

He had detonated both his flame swords directly behind him for a burst of acceleration. There was a grin on Stiyl’s face as he approached.

But.

Kamijou Touma hadn’t been aiming at Stiyl who was too quick for such a slow attack to hit.

He had aimed at a giant outdoor air conditioning unit.

And the rooftop had already been soaked with the blowing rain.

The puny boy was leaning against a concrete wall. It perfectly protected him from the diagonally-blowing rain. Except for around the rectangular box for the elevator.

Yes.

That priest hadn’t repelled Accelerator’s lightning attack – he had dodged it.

Stiyl wasn’t invincible.

There was a reason he had to dodge it.

“Wha-?”

Stiyl Magnus didn’t even have time to say anything.

Kamijou heard the result as he curled up on the one piece of dry concrete.

''Kazap!!!

After a deafening electrical blast, the black-clad priest crumpled to the rooftop.

===Part 3===

Stiyl Magnus lay motionless on the rooftop.

“…”

The pointy-haired boy glanced down at his weapon and then tossed it to the rain-wet concrete. His overuse had left the cup at the end broken and unusable.

Kamijou breathed a heavy sigh before something intruded on his thoughts.

The raindrops.

Rules formed in the supposedly random noise and the complex collision of sound waves produced a clear human voice.

He recognized it. That voice belonged to Academy City’s #1.

“How the hell are you alive?”

“It’s a long story.”

Accelerator would have come in contact with bits and pieces of magic, but Kamijou doubted he could keep up with an info dump about going to hell and back and that the hell he visited was in fact an artificial field created by Rosencreutz.

Kamijou had actually experienced it himself, but even he didn’t understand it all.

“More importantly, aren’t you the Board Chairman at the very top? I know I got back up after being dead for more than 24 hours, but I assure you I’m not a zombie infected by some strange new pathogen. This works differently. The Magic Gods are still a concern, but can’t you at least do something about those Bio Secure people?”

“I’ve got no info on them. I’m using ''the master key'' to gather information now, but I can’t order them to withdraw right away. Because their chief, Kihara Goukei, intentionally took herself out of commission. She’s using the fact that I can’t contact the person in charge to give her people freedom to act.”

“Out of commission?”

“She bit her tongue. Leading to massive blood loss and cardiac arrest. What a pain in the ass.”

He wished he hadn’t asked. There really was something wrong with those Kiharas.

Academy City was worn down. Not that it could have stood against two legit Magic Gods at the best of times. When Othinus was at her full power, she had destroyed and restored this world thousands or millions of times.

The standard methods didn’t apply.

The only way to possibly beat them was to trigger some kind of extraordinary chemical reaction.

So he would defeat them with Imagine Breaker and Alice Anotherbible.

“We just have to do whatever we can.”

“It’s the people who talk like that who end up dead in mere seconds, leaving it to everyone else to clean up their mess.”

Kamijou couldn’t argue when he had indeed died against Alice. How sad.

The link to Accelerator ended.

He apparently wanted to focus on Bio Secure.

“…”

Kamijou wobbled.

But he couldn’t afford to collapse here.

His heavy breathing was white as it left his mouth. He might die if he stayed out in the rain too long.

But he wasn’t there yet.

Not if his presence could save someone just by continuing to live.

The boy slowly turned around.

“Next…”

An especially loud rumble shook the entire building.

He picked up a broken bike chain and a metal pipe and stuck them in his belt.

He took the emergency stairs down.

To the third floor.

Alice was battling someone in the long hallway there.

Magic Gods Nephthys and Niang-Niang.

He was already this battered and near death after fighting Stiyl. Immediately joining a battle against extraordinary Magic Gods was obviously suicide. Even with the rule-breaking trump card that was Alice Anotherbible.

Nevertheless, he couldn’t give up.

He wouldn’t let anyone say he shouldn’t have come back to life.

Alice Anotherbible had cried.

She had wailed loudly for him.

For Kamijou Touma to live.

He had accepted it.

That cry was one thing he could not deny.

He didn’t know how intelligent the Magic Gods were with their bizarre wisdom and he didn’t know why they saw him as such a threat for crawling back out of hell. It didn’t matter. If their misunderstanding would lead them to destroy this little world where Index, Othinus, the calico cat, and everyone else lived, then he would fight and protect this place in the world. Because being alive meant you could physically act.

He didn’t have any concrete odds of winning.

Mr. Misfortune could never play the card of relying on a selfless miracle.

Nevertheless, Kamijou Touma faced forward.

And walked on his own two feet.

He wouldn’t die.

Something was different from when he fought Magic God Othinus.

And from when he fought Alice Anotherbible.

Anna Kingsford and Christian Rosencreutz had taught him something before giving him the ticket of resurrection.

Death could not be whitewashed.

It was a simple fact, which was why no one in the world could overturn it, but that didn’t mean you had to make light of or despair in the limited life you had left.

He had reclaimed his own life.

So he had to make the most of it.

He had longed for this in that hell. What was it he had wanted to do in this silly world? What had Kingsford shown him when he came to a stop, saying he had no reason to return to life?

He wanted to apologize to everyone who had worried over him, return to that room with Index and Othinus, go to school like always, have no reason left to fight against Aradia, Anna Sprengel, and the rest, and to have Alice as a part of it all.

He only felt the word “preposterous” creeping up on him because he still didn’t have a concrete plan.

He had to find out how far he had to go.

Instead of speaking of vague hopes, he had to count the steps on the stairway to making that dream come true.

That wouldn’t be easy.

He didn’t have time to rest.

He couldn’t stop walking until he had accomplished everything he had envisioned while wandering through hell and looking up at the world of the living so far overhead.

The two Magic Gods – Nephthys and Niang-Niang – who would harm Alice were his first hurdle.

So he wasn’t going to die just because they were so powerful.

He hadn’t come back to life so he could run away, curl up behind cover, and force a stiff smile while avoiding all risk.

He was through suppressing what he wanted to do.

Nephthys and Niang-Niang seemed to have noticed the boy’s appearance from behind Alice.

“Oh?”

“Huh, does that mean you took Stiyl out?”

They didn’t seem to care at all.

The battle wasn’t over yet.

Kamijou pulled a metal pipe of a handy length from his belt at the side of his hip.

(How many times did I die against Othinus?)

He hadn’t been counting.

And even after all that, he never had truly defeated her.

And now he was up against two at once.

“''So what?''”

At the same time, Nephthys and Niang-Niang stopped where they were. They slowly raised their hands. Like a joke.

Kamijou roared while tightly gripping the pipe.

“Huh!? What the hell are you doing now!?”

“We have no reason left to fight,” answered a grinning Niang-Niang.

This was weird.

The Magic Gods might just destroy the world for fun, but they were always true to their actions.

He couldn’t think of any reason for them to hesitate when they had a path to victory.

And there was no sign of any kind of unexpected accident on their part.

Then was this the ending Nephthys and Niang-Niang had expected?

What had they gained from this?

(Wait.)

Kamijou thought back on what Nephthys had said.

He reviewed the basic information.

(A Magic God is someone who doesn’t hesitate to improve themselves by all means available, up to and including their own death. That won’t necessarily make you a Magic God, but they wouldn’t want it to happen.)

“This wasn’t about me at all. You were ''worried about Stiyl''?” asked Kamijou, astonished.

The bandages woman lowered her raised hands and shrugged.

“That priest is so dead set on protecting the grimoire library no matter what, it was obvious he was going to try something extremely reckless in the near future. Now, in all likelihood, attempting a deadly trial would only end in his meaningless death, but there would be some really annoying consequences in the unlikely event he succeeded.”

“What happens when a pure, straitlaced guy like him becomes a Magic God and begins seriously thinking about world peace? The world becomes a lot more restrictive. And there’s no way I’m dealing with that.”

Niang-Niang cackled and waved her baggy sleeves around.

Kamijou had thought this was weird. Nephthys and Niang-Niang were Magic Gods on Othinus’s level. Alice Anotherbible was one thing, but they should have killed Kamijou in the blink of an eye. It would have been truly instantaneous. Yet they hadn’t done that.

Kamijou let out a rough breath.

“So what are you going to do now?”

“Leave. Academy City isn’t our home.”

And that was that.

Perhaps the conflicts among the puny humans meant nothing to the gods up in heaven.

Regardless, Kamijou was glad he wouldn’t be forced into a hellish situation where he had to begin a fistfight with two Magic Gods until one side or the other couldn’t keep going. He really hoped those capricious Magic Gods would leave Academy City before they changed their minds and decided to start fighting again.

“Then get going. You can see what state the city’s in, can’t you? We can’t even fix the broken buildings, so we’re not exactly in a place to entertain tourists.”

“Yes, yes.”

“But we can drop by to play whenever we want, you know? We are true Magic Gods, after all.”

And during that conversation…

“Gah!?”

Someone’s voice caught in their throat.

Nephthys and Niang-Niang both reached a hand to the center of their chest.

They doubled over but still couldn’t stand it and wobbled before collapsing to the floor.

Despite supposedly reigning as one the greatest threats imaginable.

Kamijou glanced over at Alice, but the small girl shook her head.

This wasn’t Alice’s rule-breaking magic.

But in that case…

(Wait.)

Who else could it be?

(It can’t be.)

Slowly – no, hesitantly – Kamijou Touma turned to look behind him.

Stiyl Magnus.

He couldn’t stand straight.

He looked ready to collapse at any moment.

Still, the tall priest was indeed on his feet. Once more. The outline of his shoulders wavered unsteadily. Almost like some kind of mirage effect.

It didn’t seem to be a gas.

A voice like wetter and stickier blood foam spilled from the priest’s mouth.

“Magic Gods started out as human but improved themselves until they became something known as gods, right?”

An unstable cracking sound came from him.

The priest was quite tall. Unusually so for the age of 14. But his frame was straining even further.

Like he was forcibly taking in something inhuman which was causing him to slowly rupture from within.

“Stiyl…?”

“It’s no different from Telesma. People can draw power from an object of greater purity and precision. From the outside.”

With a talisman bearing the name or symbol of a constellation, you could borrow the power of the stars.

In the same way, could you directly draw power from Goddess Nephthys by using a pyramid symbol?

“No matter how far you take it, magic is ultimately a technology. No one can ever keep it to themselves forever. Once you know how it works, you might not be able to use it yourself, but you can at least develop a trick to take advantage of it.”

“Wait, Stiyl!! What are you doing!?”

“''Stealing the magic power specially refined from the Magic Gods’ life force.''”

Stiyl tossed a single card into the air.

A different symbol was drawn over the rune with blood. A circle was drawn inside a triangle reminiscent of a pyramid. If Niang-Niang saw it, she would probably stiffen too.

“Maybe you could compare it to shoving rocket fuel inside a commercial car. Ordinarily, you’d only end up blowing up the engine, but if you managed to fit it in right, it would give you shocking acceleration. I’d prefer not to think about what this is costing me, though.”

The cost.

Kamijou had seen hints here and there that magic was a dangerous thing. For example, if an esper attempted to use magic, they risked destroying all of their blood vessels and nerves. Then there was Aleister’s talk of the sparks produced from the collisions of phases…which caused the unearned deadly fate that had taken his family from him and triggered the Battle of Blythe Road.

But what about this?

Did this carry a brand new form of risk!?

“I call it Crossroad,” said Stiyl. “I created the spell from the ground up, but the idea itself isn’t that unusual, is it? I heard a report saying the idea of making multiple religions and gods your own once caused some trouble for Orsola Aquinas.”

“…”

“That is my spell’s name. I will incorporate other cultures if it will help me achieve my wicked and shameful goal!!”

Kamijou immediately threw aside the metal pipe he held.

It wasn’t going to help.

The priest grabbed his cigarette between two fingers and crushed it.

An explosive roar followed.

Flames rushed out.

The metal pipe melted away to nothing before it even hit the floor.

The railing glowed red hot and the paint audibly peeled from the wall.

But Stiyl was not wielding a pair of red and blue flame swords.

Only a single fist.

What meaning had he placed within that form?

If Stiyl had only wanted to trap and kill Kamijou Touma, he hadn’t even needed to make his presence known. He could have sent a report to Anti-Skill and let those grownups crush the boy. Or he could have watched on while the two Magic Gods attacked.

But he hadn’t done those things.

No matter how ugly and selfish an action it was and even if it meant ignoring his Anglican orders in an act of betrayal, that magician had still come to the front line to do this himself.

“Fortis931…”

Something spilled from Stiyl Magnus’s lips.

A magic name.

The words engraved in his heart and the reason he challenged this great world.

This priest would use up every last bit of his life for the sake of a single girl.

For someone who had walked that different path, choosing to burn away part of his lifespan in a single act of magic may have been the obvious choice.

(Yeah…)

Kamijou Touma accepted that.

Which was why he clenched his fist even harder than before.

Trickery wasn’t going to cut it anymore.

(He really is a towering wall in my path. He’s my greatest enemy!!!)

===Part 4===

There were no tricks this time.

In that terribly long and straight hallway, Kamijou and Stiyl clenched their right fists and raced toward each other.

The first blow would end it.

Everyone could tell.

It was endlessly barbaric and primitive.

But it had the refreshing feel of two knights on horseback engaged in single combat.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

In real time, it couldn’t have lasted even a few seconds.

The moment of intersection arrived almost instantly.

Stiyl was the first to act.

He was around 2m tall, so even in supposedly equal single combat, he had the greater reach.

So what?

Kamijou didn’t even consider defense.

He was prepared to slip past the attack made first and deliver a surefire blow of his own.

Just before impact, Stiyl’s right knee unnaturally dropped down.

That was the cost.

Attempting to hijack a Magic God’s power without mastering that path yourself was like asking for pain. And since he had mentioned a cost, Stiyl had to understand that better than anyone.

So what had Kamijou Touma paid?

That question lingered in his mind, but the puny boy still clenched his right fist tight.

This guy so cared for Index he had possibly made an enemy of the Anglican Church and Academy City to reclaim the small world that was taken from him.

So.

He would win no matter the cost.

“God…”

Stiyl’s eyes widened in surprise.

After that, Kamijou distinctly saw his face crumple like a child on the verge of tears.

“If this world, this story, is moving ahead according to the system you created…”

He didn’t recognize this.

Kamijou Touma had no memory of these words.

But.

When he looked in that guy’s eyes, they naturally came from his mouth.

“Then I first need to destroy that illusion!!!”

''Wham!!!

Kamijou Touma’s right fist caught Stiyl Magnus in the cheekbone.

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume12 Chapter3

2025-04-22T03:37:19Z

Churronzon:

==Chapter 3: A World Worse Than Death – Soul_Hazard.==

===Part 1===

He was finally alive again.

Alice Anotherbible had convinced him.

“Teacher.”

The blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl refused to let him go. She was clinging to him with a beaming smile. She leaned against him like a large and poorly trained dog.

Feeling human warmth and talking with someone was so wonderful.

(And now that I’ve calmed down some, that is quite the outfit, Alice.)

She was, after all, in her grown up mode.

She was much taller than when he had first met her. And her chest and butt were very much in adult mode too.

This bigger Alice bothered him.

Each individual part was definitely Alice Anotherbible. But she had a grown up face. She looked like a neighborhood college girl. And on the spectrum of young women, she was more on the sexy Oriana end than the gentle Orsola end. That sweet but unapproachable leader was walking by his side while “dressed” in nothing but black belts tied complexly around her naked body. Outside. It was not normal.

When he had seen her last, he was beaten up, had lost a lot of blood, and was waiting for the countdown toward death to end, so he hadn’t been able to focus on this particular detail. Now he could.

''Umm.

''Should an adolescent boy really be seeing this from so close up?

Kamijou Touma stared into the middle distance.

“Well, this is really starting to feel sinful…”

“In what way?”

His heart was going wild over seeing the very person who had killed him, so maybe it really was over for him. He couldn’t make fun of Aogami Pierce anymore.

But he decided to put off thinking about that.

For now, they couldn’t just stay in the back alley.

Bio Secure was it? That group was still after him. And even without that, it wasn’t a great idea to stay out in the cold January rain for long.

Also…

“Um, Alice? Could you stop that?”

“?”

She looked confused.

With her arms around his neck and her cheek nestled against him.

Because, as she had made him very much aware over the past few minutes, she looked like a curvy blonde white woman right now. And she was standing outside with only black leather belts to cover her nudity. To be blunt, she wasn’t dressed appropriately for public.

Having her all over him like this was a problem.

Don’t ask why! That he was a boy was explanation enough!!

“Teacher, do you think there is something wrong with the girl’s clothing?”

“Um, yes.”

“Then the girl will just take it off.”

“No naked! Not while outside!!”

Only after saying it did he realize that meant it would be okay if they were inside. Oh, no. And her eyes were sparkling now. He may have taught her the wrong lesson.

“Do you mean the girl needs new clothing?”

“I don’t have any money.”

“Tah dah!! You’re in luck, teacher, because the girl found this!”

“Wh-what the-!?”

The unnaturally curvy girl was smiling.

While displaying something spread out between her hands.

“Umm, does that say Erotic Fallen Angel Maid? Japanese is so hard to read with its combination of katakana, kanji, the alphabet, and kaomoji stamps.”

“The girl named Alice must never wear that!! …But wait. This is weird. Would the Erotic Fallen Angel Maid actually be less revealing?”

“???”

She was pure as could be.

Even though her height and boobs size were in the upperclassman category.

Are you unaware what a horrible person Kamijou-san is, Alice?

“I appreciate it, but it’s embarrassing, um, having you hugging me while you’re so big.”

“Hm? Then the girl can shrink down.”

“Wait, no, that’s terrifying! Don’t hug me with ''the empty shell'' still partially attached!!”

The sexy young woman split down the center and little storybook Alice emerged. With a smile. The end result looked something like a centaur!! And what was all that sticky goop!?

===Part 2===

They had seen it.

Misaka Mikoto and Shokuhou Misaki had clearly witnessed that moment.

That figure had crawled out from the cremation chamber’s thick metal door and then run toward the crematorium’s exit.

What was that!?

“W-wait.”

Mourning clothes Shokuhou smiled stiffly while pinching and stretching her cheek.

“Th-this isn’t all some bad dream, is it?”

“What kind of old-fashioned reaction is that, Shokuhou? Your real age is showing- wah!”

The queen, who was an expert in controlling minds yet had no luck at all psychoanalyzing Misaka Mikoto, reached out and poked Mikoto’s right cheek.

“You check too, Misaka-san. With that squishy cheek.”

“…”

“Ow, ow, ow, owwwwww, that’s my boob! You’re not supposed to iron claw that! My boob is going to tear right offffffffffffffffffff!!!”

Misaka Mikoto was busy wordlessly grabbing the hunk of fat with a hand and pulling back to perform a durability test, but this did nothing to wake her from the dream and obliterate this world.

“You’re overreacting. It’s not going to tear off from a little thing like this.”

“But, um, Misaka-san, then what is that snapping sound I’m hearing?”

“Idiot. That’s just a pearl necklace breaking, so it’s no big deal.”

“Noooo, this outfit is a rentallllllllll!!!”

Shokuhou had an aura of “not hurting for money”, but Mikoto was aware that damaging rental clothing would mean losing the “trust” that couldn’t be bought.

Also, Queen Shokuhou apparently put on a stiff and tearful smile when she was truly pushed to the edge. There’s your lesson for the day, everyone!!

“But anyway…” said Mikoto (who had bought her mourning clothes and couldn’t return them since her family crest was on them).

Shokuhou had a point.

She had noticed something off.

Back when she touched Kamijou Touma’s face through the coffin’s window.

She had expected it to be dry. After all, it had been a full day since he died.

But instead…''his skin had felt weirdly damp''???

(But his death was confirmed. And it had been quite some time since then. That was way past the point of reviving him with CPR.)

“If we aren’t dreaming, what just happened?”

“M-maybe it’s so cold we’re hallucinating?”

“That would only apply to you, stupid exhibitionist queen,” groaned Mikoto with a hand on her brow.

This didn’t seem to be an artificial dream. …Unfortunately, Academy City technology could pull off a scientific version of “it was all a dream”, but that wasn’t the case this time.

A crematorium official sighed softly while wiping the sweat from his face with a handkerchief.

He radiated anxiety and frustration.

“Wh-what is with those Bio Secure people?”

“(Misaka-san, ever heard of them?)”

“(Nope.)”

Bio Secure.

They probably functioned as a defense against nuclear, biological, and chemical threats. The group in their overly thick powered suits certainly stood out. The part-time monk who had refined his classical music and speaking skills had the mood of his ceremony completely destroyed.

Most of the powered suit group had gone outside.

They appeared primarily interested in Kamijou Touma.

That said, they weren’t just ignoring the crematorium either.

The crematorium workers and high schoolers seemed desperate to try and keep up with the rapidly changing situation, but they couldn’t have behaved like that if they had a proper understanding. The threat of death was close at hand.

“''Kihara.''”

“I’ve never heard of one named ''Goukei'' either.”

They had said their chief had arrived. If Bio Secure was operating with a member of ''the'' Kihara Family at the top, Mikoto severely doubted they were an honest organization.

“E-e-excuse me. Wh-when are we going to be let out of here?”

“Can we at least call someone here? I could really go for a pizza.”

Kamijou Touma’s classmates had done nothing wrong. But they likely didn’t understand the weight of that Kihara name. They wouldn’t be recklessly complaining to the powered suits if they did. Of course, if they could remain ignorant, that would be the best for them, but that wasn’t an option for the #3 and #5.

“How is that idiot still getting us involved in this stuff after he’s dead?”

“Let’s not assume that important-sounding Kihara actually knows what’s going on.”

Whatever the case, they couldn’t just stay here.

The question was if those powered suits would let them go.

A woman standing at the front of the powered suit group was the only one without a suit.

She wore a white coat over a plain white blouse and a tight skirt. And she wore white pantyhose. However, her overall image was unbalanced by the cap covering all of her hair and the large mask she wore. If anything, she may have looked something like a dentist…

“Chief Kihara Goukei,” whispered a powered suit.

While looking toward Mikoto and the others.

“We have two irregulars. If the Bank check is accurate, they are the #3 and the #5. I don’t know what they’re doing here, though.”

Mikoto and Shokuhou twitched in silent reaction.

The woman really was the Kihara.

Why would a monster like that make an appearance now?

Mikoto wasn’t even willing to signal Shokuhou with her eyes. Looking away for even that long scared her. If it came to it, she might have to launch a preemptive strike on her own.

That was her thinking.

Then the woman looked their way.

A gentle voice approached them from behind the large dentist-like mask.

“I am Kihara Goukei, mademoiselles. But feel free to call me Madame Gou.”

Mikoto thought she was going to black out for a moment.

The crematorium official must have learned about this earlier because he only averted his eyes. Silently.

(French?)

What the hell?

She could have simply been busty and attractive, but she just had to make it weird, didn’t she!?

Meanwhile, a powered suit approached.

“Chief Kihara Goukei.

“Oui, oui. I assume that is the facility patron? Then let us grownups talk together.”

With an exasperated sigh, the woman called Kihara Goukei turned to face the official while flanked by powered suits.

Her eyes were grinning.

“First, I must ask. You do claim to be in charge here, oui?”

“You must be kidding!! I don’t know how to handle a body infected by who-knows-what. The crematorium isn’t at risk, is it? If we need to do anything to decontaminate, just tell me. I can’t afford to lose my workplace!!”

“Then you are transferring authority to me. You can leave everything to Madame Kihara Goukei☆”

Mikoto felt silly for preparing for a fight after hearing this was a Kihara.

However…

“B-but, Kihara-san. Why, um, were you so quick to believe that a body had gotten back up?”

“Now, now, monsieur. No need to be nervous about speaking to me. Let’s just say it isn’t out of the question here in Academy City. In the past, I have seen a swarm of ants capable of turning a human into an anthill with their human form intact, and a transparent movable liquid coating that can cover a corpse and then stretch and contract in response to specific frequencies.”

What in the world?

Mikoto had never heard of either of those things.

She couldn’t imagine where that technology came from or what kind of wickedness it had been used for.

“We must retrieve the spécimen so that I can inspect it and determine just what caused the body to get back up. Controlling the dead is not that unusual a technologie. I should be able to explain after opening up the body and taking a peek inside. And once I determine where that technologie came from, I will find the villain responsible.”

(I-I don’t like how she’s saying it, but it scares me that what she’s saying makes a lot of sense!!)

Mikoto bristled and very nearly shouted out loud.

She couldn’t let the weakling look fool her.

A Kihara was still a Kihara.

Meanwhile, mourning clothes Shokuhou’s attention had shifted to her small purse. Specifically, to a TV remote inside.

“Killing moi would accomplish nothing.”

Kihara Goukei whispered behind her mask before Shokuhou even pulled it out.

She may have encountered family members who freaked out over her treatment of the deceased.

Pure villains were bad, but panicked good people could be terrifying as well.

“Bio Secure’s violence is based on a flow chart so that it can continue to function no matter who is infected. Thus, my own mort will not stop the team from acting.”

For one thing, a dead body had stood up and left on its own two feet.

Had that really happened?

Mikoto had seen it herself and even she found it hard to believe.

So…

“Shokuhou, have you been doing some weird training when I wasn’t looking? Really, I’m shocked you of all people learned the importance of daily hard work. I never imagined the day would come your Mental Out could reach my brain.”

“Could you not use me to fuel your nonscientific escapism!? I saw him get back up too! What in the world is happening!?”

Shokuhou must really have been panicked because she tearfully grabbed at Mikoto. The queen had really lost if if she was relying on the same person who had just grabbed her boob without permission.

(Hm.)

Still in the black kimono that looked terribly out of place on a 14-year-old, Misaka Mikoto crossed her arms and looked up at the ceiling. When she got annoyed like this, she looked more like a yakuza boss’s wife than a funeral attendee.

A few options came to mind.

And the most likely were…

“The body was in a state of suspended animation, the body was switched for a living lookalike, or the reports of his death were fake news. Those are probably the only ones that are physically and realistically possible.”

“You know those are all a stretch, don’t you!? You saw how dead he looked before the funeral. That rules out suspended animation or a lookalike. But whatever the case, the adults are going to do something awful to him if we don’t catch him first!!”

After they yelled at each other (like good friends?), Mikoto suddenly fell silent.

If they found him…what happened next?

Would they shove him back in the coffin, shut the lid, shove that in the cremation chamber, burn him, and live happily ever afterwards?

That felt like fundamentally missing the point somehow.

If he had gotten back up, why not leave him like that? Why not just let him escape?

Just then, Kihara Goukei clapped her hands as if signaling a change.

“Now, everyone. It is time to begin our search for the cadavre. No need to over complicate matters. No complicated mystère solving is needed in the real world. If we catch him and autopsy him, the vérité will be revealed.”

“Kh.”

Mikoto’s body moved seemingly on its own.

She had a single target.

It didn’t matter that she was wearing a kimono. She cut behind Kihara Goukei as sharply as a knife and then placed an arm around her neck.

For some reason, the shocked response came not from Kihara Goukei herself but from Shokuhou Misaki.

“Misaka-san, what are you doing!?”

“I don’t know. I just know I can’t let them autopsy him without question like that!!”

And why aren’t you using Mental Out, #5!? Don’t hold back out of fear!!

Meanwhile, Kihara Goukei was entirely carefree.

She was being strangled from behind, but she was smiling.

“Oh, an étranglement? I give, I give.”

“You are aware I’m Academy City’s #3, aren’t you? If I produced a billion volts like this, it’d fry your precious Kihara Family brains. Want to see what having average smarts is like?”

“Now that is a fate worse than mort.”

Kihara Goukei had been addressed as “chief”. The powered suits had all sought instruction from her. No matter what she claimed, taking her hostage should keep Bio Secure as a whole from acting.

The French-speaking woman smiled.

“Now, just follow the flowchart☆”

Mikoto heard a dull ripping sound.

As out-of-place as it was, it reminded her of when she would bite into a thick beef tongue meal.

And that wasn’t entirely inaccurate.

The large mask was dyed red. Kihara Goukei appeared to have thick, dark red blood spilling from her mouth. A lot of it.

“Damn!! Why would you bite your own tongue!?”

“Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle.”

The woman tried to say something with a smile, but it was incomprehensible.

No hesitation at all?

This was the extreme form of a weakling.

The real battle began once she lost. Her leaving the battlefield was no more than a trigger.

Kihara Goukei. Mikoto had run into a few members of the Kihara Family before, but this woman appeared to be annoying in a different way from the others.

Mikoto immediately pulled off the mask and shoved a towel in her mouth, but she wasn’t sure how you were supposed to treat someone who had bit their tongue. One of the funeral attendees appeared to be a school doctor, so she had no choice but to leave the woman in her care.

(Oh, god!! She smashed the organization’s brakes right on front of me! I should’ve zapped her before she had a chance to say anything!!)

At that moment, Shokuhou, whose black dress made her look like a wicked witch, whispered something. With her head lowered.

“It’s raining outside.”

“What does that have to do with any-”

“I don’t know exactly how long since he died, but what if he gets wet? Won’t he rot?”

“…”

“…”

They both fell silent.

And then they both ran for the exit.

They had no idea what condition Kamijou Touma was in right now. But if they didn’t capture him soon and throw him into a full-body dryer or something, he would definitely end up as a horrific gory mess!!

===Part 3===

The Doppler effect distorted a passing siren.

An Anti-Skill special vehicle must have passed by on the nearby main street.

“Kh.”

Kamijou jumped because he was dressed from head to toe in white burial clothes. They were more like a Japanese bathrobe than a kimono.

Apparently he was a fugitive. He really had returned to life, so why did he have to avoid the main streets and stick to the back alleys? He had no idea what might happen to him if he was caught.

(D-d-d-dammit, Kingsford!! I’ll grant that you kept your promise to send me back from hell, but couldn’t you have done more than the bare minimum there!? Of course it’s going to be a big deal and cause a panic if a corpse suddenly gets back up more than a day after dying!!!)

The January rain was another problem.

He could feel it soaking through his clothes, penetrating his skin, and stealing away his body heat. And yet his feelings didn’t just numb over. It wasn’t often that being “chilled to the bone” felt more literal than figurative.

Setting aside the scientific values, he was pretty sure snow would have been preferable to this.

“Alice, are you alright?”

“Hm, hm♪ The girl is A-OK as long as she’s with you, teacher☆”

His breath was white and his body shivering, but little Alice was smiling in the very same rain. Even though her storybook dress had short sleeves. She held onto Kamijou’s arm from the side and refused to let go.

She was being very huggy and squeezy.

But come to think of it, the Bologna Succubus was also a Transcendent, but when she had been injured in Shibuya at the end of the year, hadn’t she suffered and shivered from the cold?

Maybe this was another area where Alice Anotherbible was abnormal.

“?”

Alice tilted her head with a full smile and an “eh heh heh” of laughter.

The little girl might be fine, but she was so soaked it worried Kamijou to see her like that.

…He did find himself more comfortable with this little version of her, maybe because he was more accustomed to her this way. He still wouldn’t want her walking around the streets in that black leather outfit like this though.

Kamijou was in burial clothes and Alice wore an apron and dress ensemble that looked straight out of a storybook. Plus, they were both soaking wet and without an umbrella. Kamijou was barefoot. This country’s constitution guaranteed many types of freedom. He knew that, but he was still pretty sure being dressed like this anywhere but Shibuya on any day other than Halloween would end with the authorities taking him into custody. And not the gentle “how about you come talk with us” kind – the forcibly restraining him kind.

“A-a-a-anyway, I’d like to get somewhere warm.”

“Are you cold, teacher? Then the girl will warm you up!”

“Alice, we’re not at the ‘stranded on a snowy mountain’ stage yet!!”

He wanted time to think.

He wanted to relax and rest somewhere warm, but he knew he would be kicked out for violation of the dress code if he tried to go to a convenience store or a chain cafe while dressed so strangely and soaking wet.

The shared offices the size of phone booths would be empty, but he didn’t think those had their own heating systems. He could get in easily enough, but he would freeze to death going there in January while soaked.

Kamijou Touma sighed softly.

The sigh came out white.

Little Alice innocently ate up his breath.

It might all seem like a joke, but he was in a fairly serious situation.

He had to make a decision.

“I guess the only place left would be my dorm room.”

===Part 4===

As the frigid rain fell, electricity crackled in the gap between two buildings.

Just adding cold rain was enough to greatly change the nature of this attack. Instead of striking a single point, it became an area of effect attack.

“District 7?” Mourning clothes Mikoto looked around skeptically. “There’s more of those Bio Secure people around here. Does that mean that idiot is hiding in this district?”

If his corpse(?) really was running around, what did she want to do?

She still hadn’t found an answer to that.

But she at least knew she couldn’t let Kihara-brand special forces retrieve him, slice him up, and then incinerate him.

This was a city of science, but there were still standards for saying goodbye to someone.

Meanwhile…

“Brrrr, it’s so cold, brrrrr.”

“Why are you so sensitive to the cold when you have so much subcutaneous fat?”

“Because all my fat has gloriously gathered in my boobs.”

“(That vending machine over there sells dashi under the brand name of a restaurant famous for only using natural ingredients, but I can wait until later to tell her that.)”

“☆☆☆Misaaaaka-saaan☆☆☆”

“Bfh!? Don’t grab onto me while drooling with hearts in your eyes!! Were you possessed by a succubus!?”

“Ahh…”

Shokuhou recovered after holding her phone up to the vending machine and pressing the warm can against her cheek. Then she wrapped her hands around the can and took small sips.

And for how much the idiot queen worried about ingredients, she sure didn’t seem to mind drinking from industrial-made cans and plastic bottles. That obsession of hers may have simply been a placebo. She was an idiot, after all.

Mikoto’s head jerked up.

There was no warning.

She could sense even slight electric and magnetic disturbances. And a powered suit was a piece of electronic equipment weighing more than 300kg. There was no preventing it from leaking invisible electromagnetism.

“Here they come. Time for wave two.”

“We are going the right way, I hope?”

Sounds of destruction rang loud.

A Bio Secure powered suit broke right through the metal wall erected around a construction site and Mikoto launched a lightning spear to pierce it.

Then they were forced to run through the rainy city.

There was no need to have Shokuhou read any residual thoughts with Mental Out.

The damage to some of the construction sites was obvious. That would be due to the powered suits going nuts, not Kamijou. Just follow the destruction and they could catch up to him.

But there was another problem.

They heard dull mechanical “gashunk!!” sounds.

“Tch!! Looks like the Bio Secure powered suits are taking this seriously too!”

“My, they must see us as infection candidates.”

Candidates.

That meant it was only a possibility.

And that assumed some strange infectious agent even existed in the first place.

Seeing a corpse get up wasn’t enough to immediately accept the existence of a zombie virus. And even if it did exist, none of that implied it was highly infectious.

Mikoto wasn’t about to be killed over maybes and assumptions.

She could probably blast through those Bio Secure powered suits with a Railgun fired at three times the speed of sound.

But if she did that for each and every one, she would quickly wear herself out.

She wanted to avoid running out of gas and fainting before she managed to find Kamijou Touma.

So she wanted to lose as many of them on foot as possible, but…

“Hurry, Shokuhou!! As low as the heels are, those pumps are only slowing you down!! Take them off already!!”

“Pant, gasp. M-my dress is wet with rain and has soaked up so much water and the veil makes it hard to breathe… Gbh, why did I choose these sexy mourning clothes again?”

Still, how was that outfit structured if she was losing to Mikoto whose kimono was like a single tube?

As the #5 gasped for breath, a powered suit’s thick fingers approached her from behind. It was probably after her long blonde hair.

Were they going after the slower one first?

(I could abandon her here, but she’ll still be useful.)

Mikoto magnetically grabbed a thick steel beam from a nearby construction site and swung it straight to the side to knock away the heavy powered suit. A lot like those things that rang the huge bells at Buddhist temples.

“Heh…heh heh. So you finally admit it, Misaka-san? You finally admit you need me? Hwa ha ha. You finally admit my human controlling ability is so much more useful than your machine controlling ability!!”

“I really should’ve abandoned this idiot and attached myself to a building wall or something.”

Shokuhou tearfully clinging to her in the rain was really annoying. She must have taken Mikoto’s joke seriously.

Furious, another powered suit readied something at its hip.

A flamethrower.

Had they received authorization to use it on secondary targets like Mikoto and Shokuhou? Or had they removed the safety at their own discretion?

If this was happening here, how much of a crisis was that idiot in?

“…”

Bluish-white sparks scattered from Mikoto’s bangs.

She didn’t even need to wield a lightning spear or an iron sand sword.

No matter how powerful they were, the powered suits were still electronic devices. With Misaka Mikoto’s #3 power, she could easily shut them down externally.

But…

“Shokuhou, what is taking you!? Hurry up and stop the human inside!!”

“I’m trying, but there’s something weird about them!!”

Shokuhou Misaki’s tearful shouting was business as usual, but it was very ''un''usual when it came to psychological things.

Mental Out wasn’t working.

That meant something else was interfering.

(Is an entire human body being precisely controlled without using the brain?)

A parasite, moisture control, a virus, a drug, electrical stimuli, or a microscopic shape-memory alloy that reacted to certain frequencies. Mikoto came up with a few possibilities, but she wasn’t convinced any of them really could control someone’s body like this.

Still, the #5’s Mental Out really was being repelled.

These were abnormal people who had received the blessings provided by a Kihara.

“Damn, now it feels like there are zombies on both sides!!”

If she had to deal with an entire group of people like that, Mikoto would be worn down first.

Had they been intentionally designed that way?

A collection of endlessly replaceable ordinary people were used to defeat an irregular individual. By eliminating individuality, that group had made itself immortal. Kihara Goukei had bit her tongue and taken herself out of the fight right away, but maybe she wasn’t interested in making herself special.

On the other hand, this was apparently a group the grownups had put together in order to battle “reanimated corpses”.

While sporadically releasing 1 billion volt currents, Mikoto turned around just as they descended a slope leading down into a culvert.

She magnetically attached her purse to her belly to free up her hand and then flicked an arcade coin with her thumb.

She fired a Railgun.

The roar of compressed air. The orange streak. A moment later, a shockwave swept across the scene, and the tunnel-like entrance collapsed.

She turned on her phone’s light so she could see.

“This is only going to buy us some time. A culvert this big is going to have other entrances and those powered suits might have the horsepower to dig through the concrete rubble.”

“Pant. Why do you…seem to come alive…when it’s time to fight?”

The #5 looked ready to slump to the ground, so Mikoto grabbed her arm and continued further in.

There were fewer hints compared to all the signs of destruction in the construction sites, but Mikoto’s microwave radar could scan the detailed dust on the ground and any traces of water while Shokuhou could read residual thoughts.

So they could search for signs along a single path.

Or they should have been able to…

“Wait,” said Shokuhou on reflex. “What is this?”

“Looks like something happened here.”

It wasn’t that there were no signs.

There were too many.

In a word, something had exploded. Whatever had happened here, nothing had escaped unharmed.

With nothing at all, the small hints could show the way, but this was the opposite. Like the red cellophane placed over a problem set, there were too many signs everywhere to tell which one was the right one.

Mikoto, their physical fighter, spoke cautiously.

“The rebar is melted. This explosion was even hotter than city gas. Could it have been an oxyacetylene flame?”

The explosion itself had been powerful, but that meant the trail ended here.

Where had Kamijou Touma gone in this cold and rainy world?

Eventually…

“Hmm,” groaned Shokuhou, twirling her TV remote like a handgun.

She may have been lonely.

She was focused on a bucket-like powered suit helmet.

She appeared to be reading something slowly and deeply.

“Bio Secure. Experts at solving Academy City’s problems without the Board Chairman knowing. But then they send the responsible corporation or lab a bill for some percentage of the estimated damage the problem would have caused if left unchecked.”

Mikoto wasn’t even surprised.

She had given up on excepting anything remotely resembling decency from the adults of Academy City.

“Well, if a corporation let a bacteria or alloy that reanimates dead bodies escape their secure area, they could easily go out of business. So it’s not surprising there would be experts at cleaning that up before anyone finds out.”

At that point, Mikoto frowned.

“But they send the bill after solving the problem? Without any sense of threat, I would expect those immoral grownups to try to get out of paying.”

“And can the big boss of Academy City really be so easily fooled? I would expect their stealth ability to be nowhere near as effective as they think. Then again, the surveillance system seems to have gotten a lot more lax ''of late''.”

Bio Secure likely had more than just this.

Unlike the esper children, the adults who fortified themselves with next-gen weapons would use overwhelming numbers.

“…”

Several Six Wings unmanned attack helicopters flew by overhead.

Mikoto might be able to forcibly take control of them…but she was afraid of doing so in the city. If she screwed up controlling them, she could make them crash.

And more than that direct threat, the 14-year-old in mourning clothes spoke up.

“I feel like I’m forgetting something.”

“Oh, you ‘feel like’ it, do you? You’re actually looking at your memories in their chronological context, I hope? If not, you can prophesy the end of the world all you like.”

“Or is it something that happened behind the scenes where I didn’t know about it? There’s a chance there’s something in this city I’ve only managed to catch glimpses of out of the corner of my eye.”

it felt like grasping at clouds.

Or was it?

These things had happened in the same city, no matter how big the city was.

For one, she still didn’t know how that boy had died. Maybe there was something there that explained how he came back to life.

“I don’t think we have much time.” Mourning clothes Shokuhou sighed in mild exasperation. “Let’s find some water and food. Ingredients are important. I would rather not consume any gelatins, blocks, or other chemical stuff.”

“We don’t even know if that idiot is alive or dead.”

Mourning clothes Mikoto bit her lip while hanging her head.

“There’s no way I could get any food down.”

===Part 5===

“Okay, teacher. Say ‘ah’.”

“…”

Should he really be doing this?

In a back alley, a beaming Alice fed Kamijou Touma the snack she held between her fingers. Because if he didn’t let her, he got the feeling she would never move a step from this spot.

The crunchy textured snack was not a potato chip. It was…

“Fried squid!! Japan has so many weird snacks there’s always something new to try.”

“Hm? Alice, I thought your culture didn’t like eating wriggly things.”

“It’s squid but it’s crunchy☆”

Alice Anotherbible may have been the type to enjoy the texture of her food. Whether it was plastic or metal, the water-repellent snack bag meant the cold rain couldn’t ruin the flavor.

And Kamijou felt the salt and oil soaking into his body.

No matter what anyone might claim, he was hungry back here in reality. And come to think of it, he hadn’t eaten anything after dying, had he?

(I guess this is better than being unable to produce stomach acid and puking it back up.)

Kamijou nearly dozed off in the forced comfort.

But then he realized something.

“Actually, hold on, Alice. Where did you get that fried squid?”

“The girl made sure to pay for it with money she found on the ground!”

“You can’t do that.”

“?”

Alice Anotherbible tilted her head in confusion, suggesting she still needed a bit more social studies. Still, it was adorable how she was taking steps toward living in human society.

(Academy City has been through a lot recently. There probably were a lot of people who dropped their wallets.)

He was with Alice.

They walked through the January streets as the chilly rain fell.

Not being alone was a wonderful thing.

He realized how much those around him had supported him throughout his life. Even when he wound up in hell, Kingsford had been there for him.

He could not forget that appreciation.

He never could.

“Pant, brr, it’s cold. I feel like I’ve been swimming through cold water. Maybe I should have dug through a dumpster for an umbrella or something.”

“Hm? You can do that, but the girl isn’t allowed to use money she found?”

They had arrived at some District 7 student dorms.

They entered one of many identical buildings and rode the elevator up to the seventh floor. It was quiet in the area, and, luckily, none of the residents from his school were around. They were probably all at school still.

(No, wait. They would have been at my funeral. I feel kind of bad having them do that when I’m alive.)

Alice tilted her head as they walked down the long hallway.

She seemed puzzled rather than surprised.

Come to think of it, this wasn’t her first time at his dorm. When they first met, she had snuck into his bathroom, hadn’t she?

“But, teacher, do you have a key to your room?”

“…”

Oh, right. He was wearing burial clothes.

Thinking back, it had been weird for his phone to be in the coffin with him. More than just his wallet, he didn’t even have any underwear right now. Come to think of it, this was a really lewd outfit! And now the adolescent boy was slightly curious who had put it on him!!

“Eh heh heh. Maybe it was a young woman with a gentle dorm manager vibe.”

“?”

Anyway, Kamijou Touma opened the door on the water heater attached to the outside wall and snagged the spare key hidden there.

For some reason, Alice was amused.

“Teacher, that’s so unsafe.”

“Listen, Alice. There was a time when I had less than 100 yen to my name. Not having anything worth stealing is the world’s greatest security.”

That aside, the cheap locks on the doors at a boys dorm weren’t too trustworthy to begin with. Someone could probably snap a photo of the key from a distance and duplicate it with a 3D printer.

He unlocked and opened the door.

Unpleasantly chilly air blew out into his face. It was colder inside than out.

“Huh?”

No one was there.

The air was horribly cold.

“Index and Othinus are out too. Where are they in this rain?”

He questioned it, but he would die if he didn’t warm up his soaked and shivering body.

He didn’t have time to spend on each and every action.

Once inside the room, he switched on the electric water boiler to heat some water. In the time it took to boil, he reached for the door to the closet in the small room. A poor student didn’t own many clothes. That his warmest outfit was the school-designated winter uniform showed just how extreme his poverty was.

(I can’t just change clothes. Ugh, I need to warm up more directly.)

It wasn’t even nighttime yet, but he went to the bathroom and began filling the tub with hot water. That was the greatest luxury for a poor student.

He thought he would freeze to death in the 15 minutes it would take for the hot bath to be ready, so he grabbed a towel that was sitting out. He tossed another to Alice and began drying himself off.

(Wait, what do I do about a change of clothes for Alice?)

His dorm was not equipped with clothing for a 130cm girl. Having her wear a one-size-fits-all track suit or something until her wet clothes dried would probably be best. …Oh, the dryer function. Kamijou Touma stared into the distance. That cost more in power than using an iron or hair drier, so he ordinarily never used it.

The poverty he had very nearly escaped was creeping up behind Mr. Misfortune once more.

At this rate, it wouldn’t be long before it was tapping on his shoulder.

===Part 6===

At a home in Kanagawa, Kamijou Touya hung his head. The large LCD TV linked to his computer still coldly displayed the word “offline”.

They had cut his connection.

They hadn’t let him reconnect.

None of it made sense.

With Academy City’s wall in the way, the Kamijou couple felt literally shut out.

His parents should have been at the center of it all, but they weren’t allowed in. With all the complicated paperwork, the remains would be burned before they could get inside the city.

“Gh…”

He had failed to protect his child.

Worse, he hadn’t even managed to learn how that life had been lost.

The ashes would apparently be returned to them, but what did that matter?

That powder would have been burned until nothing of the DNA map remained, so how could they even prove that was their son? How could they accept that!?

Someone placed her arms around his shoulders from behind.

But he had no response to his wife’s comfort.

“To hell with…Academy City,” groaned Kamijou Touya, his voice catching in his throat.

The black screen refused to provide any kind of response.

“Why would they cut the connection like that!? Our son is dead! And they just- we’re not a chatbot on a corporate website!! You can’t expect us to accept a death so easily!! Owwwwahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

===Part 7===

“Teacher. Huggy squeezey☆”

“…”

Should he really be doing this right now?

Kamijou Touma was given a full-power hug from needy Alice. Had his shitty life finally entered a bonus mode? The sweet and warm girl content had been through the roof for the last bit.

Maybe it was weird to think of it this way in a city of science like Academy City, but he feared he was accumulating bad karma from all this. Enough to get him punished later on!!

They were in his dorm room.

This was a strange situation where little Alice would cling to him any chance she got, but he was still pale and chilled to the bone.

(Damn, he’s not answering his phone. What is dad doing?)

Then again, this was causing enough of a commotion in a city of science. If his father did answer the phone, he would probably assume it was a ghost scare or a cruel prank.

The weird part was the disturbing lack of anyone talking about this on the school’s social media. Kamijou-san was (according to himself) a brilliant person who could actually use a smartphone and he knew how to take a look at his class’s social media group, but no one was talking about it. In fact, no one was there at all.

…Or were they cut off from it for some reason?

That bothered him, but he wasn’t going to find the answer worrying over it here. He couldn’t exactly head back to the crematorium.

Anyway, he wanted to make sure he was safe and then fortify his position.

He was preparing a bath, but it would be a while before the hot water filled the tub.

He was cold.

He felt like he was going to die.

Had his sense of cold been numbed over before? Once he got in his room, he finally recalled that it was January.

After extracting himself from Alice, he moved to the bathroom. While he was at it, he would change into his school uniform in the changing room. He checked on the tub and confirmed it would indeed take a while longer.

“Sigh… I don’t think I can wait that long. It’s not my way, but maybe I should change before taking the bath.”

“Yay, a bath with teacher!”

“Wait! Did I just hear something ultra ominous from out there!? No, reacting is the wrong move here! I need to pretend to be a dense romcom boy and have selective hearing loss over this!”

He had been careless, so now he had to press his shoulder against the changing room door to defend it at all costs.

The bathroom lock could be opened with a single flat head screwdriver. Nothing could be less trustworthy.

“Ohh, teacher wants to play the door pushing game!”

“Gwahh, how is she so strong!? Is there an elephant going nuts on the other side of the door!?”

And as he shouted that, something felt off.

“…?”

Kamijou used the indoor clothes drying rod to jam the door shut and then hesitantly reached his hand into the tub before yanking it back.

Was that ice water?

And why wasn’t there any steam coming from the bath!?

“Th-this isn’t hot water!! Why is the tub full of freezing January water!? D-did someone mess with the machine’s recommended settings and switch it to learning mode? I don’t want that! I just want it to work normally, not some weird new service!!”

“Teacher, is it a problem with the water heater outside?”

He petrified.

Being corrected by Alice was about the last thing he had expected.

Regardless, he walked out the front door while shivering.

What if it was broken? Would a repairman accept the work when he was currently being pursued by Anti-Skill?

(But is there a way to have them do the work without actually meeting them? Like when you get something delivered and they just leave it at your door? No, no. I couldn’t explain how someone other than the guy living in the room wanted the water heater repaired. Oh, but then again…)

“Teacher? When a machine is broken, you can fix it by blowing on the metal part and reinserting it.”

“Now there’s some advice that takes me back. Oh, right. You’re actually older than me, aren’t you?”

“Hm? Why are you lost in thought, teacher?”

Wait, but weren’t even discs considered old fashioned at this point? Kamijou sensed some kind of twist in space-time.

And while they discussed it, he heard a noise.

He slowly turned toward the tone he recognized as the elevator arriving.

And the lonely little girl turned with him.

(What?)

The cheap elevator door opened and a priest in black with long red hair stepped out. Maybe it was the direction of the wind or the humidity…and maybe the amount of tar or nicotine was exceptionally high, but even at this distance, Kamijou thought the stench of cigarette smoke was seeping into him.

For a brief moment, the sound of the January rain grew louder.

Almost like he was hearing the sprinklers linked to the fire alarm.

(What…the hell?)

''He had no memory of this.

''But there was something about the combination of this place, this sound, and this person.

''The scene before his eyes caused a stirring in his heart?

“S-” said the pointy-haired boy on reflex.

Yes…

“Stiyl Magnus?”

It was him.

But Kamijou had no idea why he would be here.

For one, how had an Anglican magician gotten into Academy City?

Then it hit him.

“My funeral…”

“I have zero intention of grieving over you. It just made a convenient excuse for an outsider like me to pass through the front gate and enter the city. ''The other team'' appears to be having trouble, but I’m sure they’re right there outside the wall.”

That explained the how.

But there was a more fundamental question.

Why had Stiyl come to Academy City when he was suppose to be in England?

“…”

Kamijou remained cautious.

He glanced over at Alice.

Had the Anglicans been working hard to resolve the Bridge Builders Cabal issue in their own way? If so, Necessarius’s timing had been uncharacteristically poor. No matter who might have what complaints now, the issue with Alice had been solved. She would no longer destroy others or the world.

Stiyl Magnus said nothing.

The scene around him changed.

Kamijou felt like he was being pulled toward him.

The smoker priest’s black habit flapped hard at the air and then a ton of cards burst out in a great spiral. They attached themselves to the walls and floor and stayed there. Just like cherry blossom petals covering a lake or road after the merciless rain brought them down. There were too many to even see the original colors of the surfaces.

They were all laminated…

“Rune…cards?”

“''Teacher'',” snapped Alice Anotherbible before Kamijou’s past experiences could tell him of the threat.

And just after her warning…

''Fwoosh!!!

Stiyl pulled a flame sword out of thin air like a magic trick, the sword’s form collapsed, and flames erupted out like a flash flood.

Kamijou’s right hand sprang up to hold the palm out front.

He wouldn’t have made it in time without Alice’s warning.

Imagine Breaker.

He negated the scorching flames of more than 3000 degrees Celsius, but Kamijou still couldn’t believe it.

“Stiyl!?”

“''This isn’t about Alice Anotherbible''.”

The words muttered by the flame magician were colder than ice.

“''To be honest, I don’t care about her.''”

It was obvious now.

One look in Stiyl Magnus’s piercing eyes was enough to know who his true target was.

“You’re here to kill me!?”

“Sorry, but this ''isn’t even'' a job for the Anglicans.”

The soles of Kamijou’s shoes scraped audibly against the floor as he backed up.

He rejudged the distance between them.

The straight and narrow hallway left no room for lateral movement.

He hadn’t expected anything like this, but he was still glad he had changed into his school uniform.

An outsider like Kamijou had no way of knowing how the Anglican Church would view someone who had died and come back. Was he a troublemaker who had disturbed the natural order, or was he a living sample of the work of an expert magician? Either way, he knew they weren’t going to just let him go. Especially when he was inside Academy City, the headquarters of the science side that stood opposed to the magic side.

Kamijou had come up with all these guesses, so the words spilling from Stiyl’s mouth caught him by surprise.

“With you gone, the rights to your possessions go to others.”

“?”

At first, Kamijou didn’t know what he meant.

But Stiyl was serious.

The rights to his possessions? Stiyl was willing to kill over that?

The smoker priest clarified.

“Grimoire Library Index Librorum Prohibitorum was temporarily placed in Kamijou Touma’s care.”

“…”

Kamijou felt like he was using the coin-operated binoculars found at scenic locations. The distant and out-of-reach answer was gradually coming into focus.

And the image he found left him speechless.

No.

Wait, it couldn’t be!

“It was only ever temporary. If you were dead, so be it. With her temporary owner gone, ''that girl'' would naturally be returned to England where she belongs. Many magicians hoped for exactly that. Especially those connected to the Anglicans. Myself included.”

Yes.

That was right.

Index was ''a freeloader'' in Kamijou Touma’s dorm room. He didn’t know what specific agreement the Anglican Church and Academy City had made, but the situation had been stable.

But what happened to Index if he died?

And what if the pointy-haired boy unreasonably got back up again???

“But you had the gall to come back to life. Yes, yes. I have no intention of figuring out the details of the spell. All that matters is that Kamijou Touma once more cheated the system to get through it all! …Stop messing with us like this. Do you have any idea how much it shakes the world as a whole each time you go off and die or come back from the dead!?”

Could it be that no one wanted him alive again?

He had wondered that when he first escaped from the cremation chamber. But he had assumed that was an emotional issue of like or dislike – necessary or unnecessary.

“That said, the situation plays right into my hand. You were already set to be cremated. And even after you escaped, Academy City has been working to incinerate you with flamethrowers. No one will question it if you end up burned to death now. It will require massaging the timeline a little, but I’m the best man for the job, don’t you think?”

“…”

“I can’t imagine Kanzaki Kaori or Orsola Aquinas doing this job.”

It was pure interest.

A powder keg.

He hadn’t predicted this would shake things up so badly that it could even affect the power balance between the three major Christian factions on the magic side.

“The dead should remain dead, Kamijou Touma,” spat Stiyl Magnus.

Were some battles already being fought in the shadows over who would next take in Index?

Those eyes carrying a mixture of rage and contempt were the eyes of the kind of person who amused themselves by spreading false information on social media whenever there was a disaster or war.

“That is your duty.”

Kamijou couldn’t get any words out.

A single quiet footstep sounded.

It came from Alice Anotherbible standing next to Kamijou.

“It doesn’t matter what your reasons are.”

Her voice was cold.

But you must not forget.

Alice was not angry for herself.

The coming battle had nothing at all to do with her.

But angry she was.

“If any mouth in this world says teacher should be dead, then the girl will sew it shut. As the first and the model for all Transcendents, the girl can mop the floor with an ordinary magician or two. Mop the floor easily.”

She wasn’t boasting.

After the trouble she caused Academy City, Alice might really be able to do that.

''However…

“Khah…!?”

“Teacher!!”

''Wham!!!

A sudden impact pierced through the center of his gut. Something invisible had done it. He doubled over, but he wasn’t even allowed to fall. Unable to breathe, Kamijou Touma spat out all the air in his lungs. Some blood may have come up with it.

Alice was by his side, yet her cries sounded distant.

His sense of pain was instantly blown away.

What had happened to his body was so absurd none of his ordinary senses could make sense of it.

But the most frightening part wasn’t the impact itself.

Unlike 15cm Othinus, Alice Anotherbible still had her unique power, yet she hadn’t noticed it while right by his side.

What in the world had attacked him?

Neither Aradia nor the Bologna Succubus could do this.

Then who could?

Most likely, it ''wasn’t even'' Stiyl Magnus who stood before him! After all, Alice had provided Kamijou Touma with an accurate warning when Stiyl first swung his flame sword!!

“My, my. You have taken on the stench of death since we last saw you, Kamijou Touma.”

“See, it’s just as I feared. You’ve become more like us, haven’t you?”

Kamijou’s shoulders jumped.

He recognized those voices.

One was a beautiful woman’s alluring voice, which resembled a sweet fruit so overripe it was starting to rot. The other was a girl’s young but still unripe voice.

Didn’t that combination of voices belong to…?

“Nephthys…and Niang-Niang?”

They were Magic Gods on par with Othinus.

What were those monsters doing with Stiyl?

===Part 8===

The sexy silver-haired young woman with her brown skin wrapped in bandages was Nephthys.

She was the Magic God that existed as a collection of the people used as grave goods in the pharaoh’s tombs in Egyptian mythology.

The small girl with black hair, corpse-pale skin, and a modified mini-China dress was Niang-Niang.

She was the Magic God of a Shijie-Xian, one who had faked their death to cut all ties to the living world.

…It would probably be crass to ask what they had been doing all this time.

They were gods, after all.

They gave no concern for human matters and simply popped in whenever it suited their fancy. They had apparently hung out with Hamazura Shiage a while in London, but even that had been on a whim. It was never clear how long they would remain in a single field – which could mean a world or a phase or whatever.

“Hee hee.”

“Ha ha.”

The two extraordinary beings nestled up against Stiyl Magnus from either side, but something wasn’t right.

It was true Stiyl used Norse runes.

But he was fundamentally a part of the Anglican Church. He was a priest who believed in Christianity’s monotheism. How could he work with a pyramid mummy and a disguised corpse Shijie-Xian?

Kamijou’s inability to speak must have been enough for them to know where the confusion lay because Nephthys and Niang-Niang’s laughter grew louder.

“Is it really so odd?”

And after that.

The bandage woman spoke.

“Unusual people working with Necessarius should hardly be a surprise at this point. I mean, the Archbishop at the top of the Anglican Church is Dion Fortune right now. But not the actual woman – a tarot deck that is in fact an original grimoire designed to look like her.”

She sounded cheerful.

Like she was catching up with an old friend.

“And Magic Gods are, you know, the kind of people who are willing to die in our pursuit of knowledge. Christian Rosencreutz, Anna Kingsford, and hell, albeit an artificial one. It would be a problem if the process of resurrecting you left any odd trace of those legendary experts with you, wouldn’t it?”

“Powerless is about right for normal humans. I mean, those Transcendents? When an individual like you can gather them together and influence the world as a whole, things get really restrictive and just a pain. We want to live free, remember.”

It didn’t sound like those two had a change of heart that led them to side with Necessarius.

Did their interests simply align here?

For one thing, properly using all 103,001 of Index’s grimoires could possibly turn you into a Magic God. Nephthys and Niang-Niang may not have wanted to leave that thread hanging and possibly lead to more and more Magic Gods being created.

Kamijou heard a heavy metallic clunk.

Something rolled over to him.

It was the bucket-like helmet of a powered suit.

Magic God Niang-Niang had tossed it in front of him while grinning.

“We didn’t want any interruptions, so we hunted them down first.”

“…”

They were a greater threat than Bio Secure.

Of course they were. They were Magic Gods. Just remember Othinus’s former power. She had altered the world itself on a whim.

''There wasn’t even any point in counting how many times she had destroyed Academy City.

With Magic Gods involved, the previous diagram was obsolete.

“Alice…”

“No problem.”

Alice’s voice partially drowned out his own.

As if to keep him from saying the rest.

“The girl will defeat anyone who threatens your resurrected life.”

That only worried him more.

That was only a statement of intent. It did nothing to prove her ability.

This would be Transcendent versus Magic God.

…How would that play out?

Othinus didn’t count since she had lost her power, so wasn’t this the first full-power clash between the two groups? Alice Anotherbible certainly reigned at the top of the Transcendents, but it wasn’t clear how much power she had outside that category.

“Silly boy.”

In response, Nephthys boredly toyed with a lock of her silver hair.

“Just let us fight and all those questions will be answered.”

The brown goddess brought the tip of the hair to her lips and gently blew on it.

Something larger than his entire head flew right past his face at extreme speed.

The blast of wind only came after the fact. And the sound of destruction far after that.

“…”

He couldn’t react.

Had he been slow to act because it was invisible, or had the fear glued his feet to the floor? Even he wasn’t certain.

Nephthys spoke while once more brushing back her long silver hair.

“Oh, sorry about that. Were you trapped by the delusions of a little boy, thinking we might go easy on you because we know each other? We really will kill you this time, Kamijou Touma.”

He thought he would freeze.

The Egyptian goddess looked down on him with piercing eyes.

Her voice was far chillier than the winter rain.

The worst part was she was correct.

This wasn’t their first meeting. They did know each other.

These weren’t just any Magic Gods – they were Nephthys and Niang-Niang.

And with Othinus, he had reached an understanding with a Magic God before.

…Could he really say for sure he hadn’t been expecting, even a little bit, for that to mean something? Even though their presence here in Academy City meant their preparations were already complete?

These were true Magic Gods.

Othinus had been rendered harmless, but these two were still deadliness itself.

And they were ''truly'' here to kill.

Probably?

Maybe?

His battle against Alice Anotherbible should have taught him those words didn’t guarantee anything!

His body felt heavy just from imagining it.

Like he had molten lead in place of blood.

…''I might not be able to win this one.

That was Kamijou Touma’s honest thought. He wasn’t even sure what would happen against Stiyl and his 3000 degree flames, but he also had to deal with two true Magic Gods. His past battles against Othinus and High Priest were enough for him to understand the despair he was facing. These were not opponents he could face without any kind of preparation.

He gulped.

And then he realized something specifically because he couldn’t get his voice out.

“Alice…?”

Alice could not suppress the shaking of her body, but she was still biting her lip to keep from screaming.

On her own, she could survive anything.

Then what was she so afraid of?

The answer was obvious.

''Alice Anotherbible was terrified of the possibility of losing Kamijou Touma again.

…Now it was pissing him off. Why was he so incapable of considering the value of his own life?

And there was that empty room.

Index and Othinus… How many other people had he troubled with all this? Stiyl had said coming back to life was wrong and that it had caused all sorts of confusion. Maybe so. Looking at the world as a whole or at public interests, maybe Stiyl had a point.

But.

Was Kamijou really just going to accept that and die again?

He didn’t even know how many tears had been shed for him. He had been shown images of Index and Alice in that artificial hell, but that was all. It could be many others had wept and he just didn’t know it. Was he really going to give up because he couldn’t defeat two Magic Gods and a magician and accept death as the natural order of things without ever learning about all those people!?

Something happened at the center of his body.

His heart was beating.

That proved he was alive.

“…No…”

He didn’t have any kind of magical trick.

It didn’t matter that he had seen proof that a soul could be collected from death if an expert created an artificial hell to catch it.

Kamijou Touma.

Did you truly feel remorse in that hell? Did you feel anything at all while walking the path of regret the man going by Christian Rosencreutz had taken and when the expert named Anna Kingsford had stayed true to her way of life by giving him the impossible ticket to salvation?

“Don’t worry, Alice.”

He made a vow.

To the girl who had wept for him.

To the girl who had seen someone returned from the dead, wept in relief rather than fear, and spread her arms to embrace him.

“I’m not going to die here!!!”

It was time he thoroughly destroyed the ridiculous illusion that it was better he be dead.

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume12 Chapter2

2025-04-18T14:25:28Z

Churronzon: .

==Chapter 2: Funeral – Good_Bye_Bad.==

===Part 1===

Cold rain that couldn’t quite become snow fell from thick gray clouds.

It was weaker than before.

But that made it seem more stable, suggesting it would last longer.

A funeral was underway.

It had begun in the school auditorium.

The entire student body was gathered there, so they had to line up based on a system to fit. …Except Aogami Pierce and Fukiyose Seiri had frozen up nearby. Apparently Komoe-sensei had panicked, so their class’s guidance was a mess. But that boy may have appreciated a human response like that.

The space was large enough to hold hundreds of people.

That meant the heating was only so effective. Even with the air conditioning and halogen heaters, the chill could not be fully banished.

It was the presence of death.

Something you normally didn’t sense but crept up on everyone the same.

Aogami Pierce felt like the world itself were telling him an attempt to act cheerful would not fundamentally change what they were here for.

This was a funeral.

A member of their class was dead.

“Thank you all for attending despite the poor weather. Perhaps the heavens themselves are weeping for the deceased. It pains me just as much to lose someone so young.”

A young Buddhist monk got started with a microphone in hand. Fukiyose Seiri was only familiar with the term “abbot” as a title for a Buddhist monk, but she wasn’t sure if there was a proper hierarchy there.

“The abbot is the head of a single temple,” explained Aogami Pierce. “They’re the one who leads the rest of the temple’s monks. But there are a fair number of temples where the abbot is the only monk due to the aging population or just being shorthanded, so a lot of people get the terms monk and abbot confused. It’s unusual for someone that young to be one.”

“Why do you know so much about this?”

“What, are you really not reading that social media gag manga that went viral on New Year’s? It’s called ‘I Was Reincarnated and Got a Hypnotizing 5yen Coin That Makes People Do Anything I Say, but I Ended Up in a Buddhist Temple Full of Macho Monks’. The unexpected mismatch!! What fate awaits our gloomy heroine after the ascetic life and vegetarian food cleanses her in body and soul!?”

“Why can’t someone ban this guy’s very existence?” asked an exasperated Fukiyose.

But had her senses dulled over winter break? She appeared to have forgotten insults of that level were nothing more than a reward. She could be two or even three times as harsh and he would still welcome it.

The screen on the wall behind the auditorium stage came to life.

“I am truly grateful you have all gathered today for our son.”

Remote comments by Kamijou Touma’s parents played on the screen. They apparently used more than just telegrams in this day and age.

A loud slam came from the back of the auditorium.

Someone had been unable to contain themselves and rushed out while covering their mouth. For a brief moment, the outside light shined into the dark auditorium. Surprisingly, this person was not from their class. From where they came from, they must have been a student from another year.

“Kami-yan sure was loved.”

“He had the weirdest connections. I sometimes saw him speaking with an upperclassman girl.”

There was some kind of accident that led to shouting, but the funeral itself continued without a hitch.

Aogami Pierce got some words out while staring out ahead.

“Why…?”

“Hm?”

“Why do people die so easily?”

This was somehow different from before.

Death.

The word carried so much more weight. Instead of the light and empty feeling of losing a life in a video game, this carried the heavy weight of reality.

Maybe that was what a funeral was.

It was about saying goodbye.

But in a different way from a classmate moving away.

Instead of not being able to see him again after this, they already couldn’t see him again. People could not accept that so quickly, so they needed a way to smooth over the rough edges of reality or else the small society that was a school could collapse.

It was like bringing things into focus.

Uh, oh.

It wasn’t so bad when the image before Aogami’s eyes was blurry. He could stand that. But once the outlines came into focus, the corners of his eyes could be in trouble.

Trouble?

Who said it was wrong to cry? It wasn’t a competition and who did he even think he was competing with? Apparently adolescent rebelliousness could needlessly screw with people’s lives even here.

“…”

He realized he hadn’t heard Fukiyose’s voice in a while.

When he focused, he could hear some breaths seemingly covered by an unseen hand.

Or maybe she had a handkerchief out.

He wasn’t about to peek over at the next seat, though.

He envied the people who could let themselves cry here. He was always shouting in the classroom, but he felt some kind of barrier forcing himself to hold back here.

Aogami Pierce was not a diligent student.

Even during ordinary classes, he would stare out the window and daydream about battling terrorists.

He had always thought Kamijou Touma would survive to the very end.

He could do anything in his fantasies, but for some reason that boy always survived longer than Aogami himself. Aogami would sometimes save everyone and end up with a harem and he would sometimes get dramatically shot and die, but no matter what happened, Kamijou Touma would always survive to the end, no matter how beat up he was.

But.

Reality was something else entirely.

He could think of any number of things to say if he were the one to die, but he couldn’t think of a single one when it was Kamijou Touma who had died.

“I’m such an idiot,” he muttered to himself.

He hadn’t expected this.

Something had happened somewhere he wasn’t aware of.

He guessed people all over thought these things as they lived with regret.

“Now, if you will please come forward to burn incense. Yes, it will help if you climb the stairs on the right and descend the stairs on the left. You may begin.”

===Part 2===

Meanwhile, two girls experienced this from a different viewpoint.

District 7.

An ordinary high school.

The entire student body was gathered in the auditorium. But even with the warmth of hundreds of bodies, the chilly air could not be entirely banished by the air conditioning too weak for the size of the space and the halogen heaters set up in a hurry.

That acted as the breath of death in contrast to the human warmth.

A large portrait photo sat atop the stage.

The face belonged to Kamijou Touma.

They must not have expected this. He looked almost villainous on the portrait forcibly blown up from his student ID. But maybe anyone would in an expressionless ID photo taken from head on.

A part-time monk, who was apparently an unsuccessful entertainer who did this as a side job, held a microphone.

His weirdly cheerful voice may have come from mixing together his two jobs.

“Thank you all for attending despite the poor weather. Perhaps the heavens themselves are weeping for the deceased. It pains me just as much to lose someone so young.”

In addition to the student body, a guest space had been prepared at one side.

Mikoto and Shokuhou were seated there.

One of them was shaking.

“Brrrrrr. Misa-Misaka-sa-Misaka-san, it’s so c-c-cold, you need to w-w-w-warm me up.”

“Are you even wearing clothes?”

Mikoto sighed while using a hand to the face to shove away the idiot queen – who Mikoto was beginning to suspect might actually be “wearing” body paint – as she shivered and tried to cling to Mikoto from the side.

This was a high school.

For a middle schooler, it was like another world entirely.

But the usual tension she would feel was nowhere to be found.

She had actually been here before, but…

(I never imagined I would visit that idiot’s high school for this.)

Her heavy sighing wouldn’t stop.

However, she saw no one who could be his parents in the guest section.

Unsurprisingly.

Given all the paperwork and approvals required, there just hadn’t been time to invite someone in to Academy City.

“?”

“What is it, scheming queen?”

“Oh, I was just wondering who the chief mourner is. Ahn, halogen heater☆”

Shokuhou Misaki’s eyes melted at a machine that was like a “warm fan” that an official had placed in the nearby aisle. She looked about ready to spread her arms and hug the heater with hearts displayed in her pupils. Why had she even come to the funeral?

That aside…

(Chief mourner.)

Come to think of it, this was odd.

As fancy as all this looked, the crucial pillars were missing.

It all felt hollow and artificial.

“That said, we must not keep the deceased here forever. As painful as it will be, we must continue with the ceremony to put him at ease as he takes his journey into the great beyond.”

A gentle sound enveloped the auditorium.

Classical music of unknown composer and title began to play.

“…?”

Mikoto knew how to play the piano and the violin, but she frowned. She didn’t recognize this. It may have been healing music recently composed entirely on a computer. That would be fitting for Academy City.

A slideshow of photos played along with the music.

It was obvious what these were from.

“The Daihaseisai, the Ichihanaransai – Kamijou Touma-san really did smile so brightly during these events.”

''Uh, uh…

Damp sobs spilled from here and there.

But wait.

Hold on.

What was this? Even in his school, how many people even knew Kamijou Touma? He hadn’t been part of any clubs and he had no connections outside his class. He wasn’t a master shogi player and he didn’t get the top score in the national practice exam. So why were all of those students who looked like second or third years shedding tears?

Mikoto was astonished.

Maybe it was a Pavlovian response, like people who would always cry when hearing a music box playing when in a sad mood.

“They’re like the delinquents who only cry at the graduation ceremony.”

Now that she had recovered using the heat of the halogen heater, Shokuhou’s whisper pierced sharply into Mikoto.

You smile at New Year’s and you cry at funerals.

That was all it was.

Like flipping a switch or turning a dial.

Was that really enough?

Could someone’s life end with this?

Of course, it would also piss her off if someone was chatting or using their phone in the middle of the ceremony, but this felt different somehow. The tears felt cheap. She wanted to stand up and shout that this wasn’t right.

Mikoto was sad.

She didn’t know what to do now that the time had come to say goodbye.

But.

She felt her heart distancing itself at the scene she found here. The distance kept growing. Her heart had lost the ability to sense her feelings.

Why?

It was already over. She knew that. Yet she felt some kind of powerful impatience growing inside her.

Was this really enough?

Would this mark the end of someone’s life?

“To represent you all, his homeroom teacher Tsukuyomi Komoe-sensei will now present some flowers.”

“Uhh.”

It might all look emotional, but it was nothing but checking off everything on the list.

It was a routine.

It was a ceremony to cut someone away from society, forget them, and erase them.

And.

Mikoto saw a red dot out of the corner of her eye.

“?”

Curious, she looked over to see a video being recorded.

Since she wasn’t familiar with funerals, she thought maybe that was a way to leave some memory behind, but…

“(That’s the funeral company. I bet they’ll chop it up and use it in their ads.)”

Shokuhou was more coldhearted.

Perhaps she was more accustomed to death than Mikoto.

But from where?

There was no answer to that question. As Shokuhou faced forward, her profile looked somehow lonely.

The entertainer hosting the event continued on.

“We will now receive a message from Kamijou Touma-san’s parents.”

The slide show of school events switched to something else.

“I am truly grateful you have all gathered today for our son.”

Were they using an online conference app?

The white wall behind the auditorium stage acted as a large screen to project someone who was presumably his father.

He was likely at home. The room behind him looked lived in.

Maybe this had been too sudden for anything else.

His user name was displayed below him in small text.

Kamijou Touya.

His flowing words were anything but coldhearted.

Even through the screen, Mikoto could sense just how hard that grown adult was clenching his teeth to get through it.

That distant place carried a much more appropriate mood than the site of the funeral.

Or so it seemed to Mikoto.

She sensed something authentic there.

“I’m sure Touma’s life in Academy City was full of smiles and memories with all of you. He never was great in school and he didn’t develop any kind of esper power, but we have all of you to thank for allowing him to enjoy himself enough to forget about those things. Our son seemed so happy in all the emails and messages he sent us. He also sent plenty of photos and videos. Those limited glimpses into his life were enough to know his time there was a bright and happy one. And I imagine he enjoyed himself even more than he let us know. I would like to thank you all deeply on behalf of our son. Even if his life there was cut short, he was truly fortunate to be surrounded by so many wonderful frie- kh...no, I can’t do it!!”

His trembling voice grew strained partway through.

The middle-aged man’s face filled the screen. With tears welling in his eyes.

“He was our family!! Our son is dead!!! But they won’t let us in the city!! They won’t even tell us the exact cause of death!! Is it not as safe inside those walls as we were led to believe!? This is crazy! What the hell is going on in that ci- (voice muted)”

His mouth flapped silently for a few more seconds before the video also cut out.

The host put on a fake smile and worked at smoothing that over.

“Oh, dear. The signal appears to be unstable and since it still hasn’t come back, we will move on.”

How could they just move past that!?

Mikoto just about stood up from her folding chair, but Shokuhou grabbed her hand.

Firmly, to hold her in place.

Even his parent’s wholehearted rebellion had accomplished nothing.

That was just one branch on the flowchart.

By following that branch through, they could bring the ceremony back on track.

“Now, if you will please come forward to burn incense. Yes, it will help if you climb the stairs on the right and descend the stairs on the left. You may begin.”

If the entire student body burned incense, it would take all day. Instead, each class sent a representative up to the altar. The staff held stopwatches and kept everything on the schedule determined during the dry run. Someone had died, but they didn’t allow anything to break down.

It was like the sand in an hourglass.

Once the stock had been used up, it was over. The coffin would be shut and placed in the hearse to be taken to the crematorium. Then nothing would remain. Kamijou Touma would be burned to ashes, leaving nothing even on the genetic level.

The entertainer monk continued with a smile.

“Finally, I would like to read the telegrams that have arrived from those close to the deceased. To start with, um, we have a Miss Leivinia Birdway from England.”

It was ending.

The funeral really was going to end.

“You’re looking at it wrong.”

Still facing forward, Shokuhou spoke quietly but clearly in her mourning clothes.

Even though Mental Out wasn’t supposed to work on Mikoto.

Her voice was somewhat stiff, but she still managed to say it.

“We have to bring his life to an end ourselves. So, Misaka-san, you need to prepare yourself to actually say goodbye.”

===Part 3===

Outside in the frigid January city, Index and Othinus stood in the rain.

Without an umbrella.

Breakfast time had passed, but for once Index had no appetite.

On her shoulder, Othinus held down the brim of her hat and looked up.

“Good grief. Even the weather forecast felt need to betray us… This unnatural rain is more what I would expect of that human’s misfortune.”

“That would be just like Touma.”

“Along with the fake-looking condition of the sky.”

“?”

A long vehicle passed them. The strange automobile was decorated with black and gold.

It was a hearse.

Two buses followed after it.

Once they had fully passed by, Othinus whispered a question.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go?”

“What about you?”

“I am the god of war, magic, and deception. This isn’t Baldr’s trial and I’m not the type to cry at funerals. But you’re a nun, aren’t you? This really is your last chance. You might be fine now, but the regret over not seeing him off will weigh heavy on you later.”

“I’m still in training.”

Index hung her head.

She had to be feeling something.

Othinus didn’t address it.

The one-eyed god with a lance was rarely depicted as kind.

“Now, what will we do? We are a living sample of a Magic God and a grimoire library. If we head out into the world with Academy City’s protection gone, magic cabals the world over will be after us both. If you aren’t interested in following him into death, then you need to continue working at survival.”

The city was surrounded by a thick wall and invisible EM and IR were used to cut off all wireless communications between the outside and inside. Even so, the air on both sides was the same and bugs and birds could fly across the wall with ease.

So.

Index raised her head and gave her answer.

“''We’ll do what the carrier pigeon said to.''”

“Good grief. Is that method just so old-fashioned they overlooked it? But as soon as Academy City learns about it, they’ll probably fill that hole with pheromones or light or something.”

If they headed to his school now, they might make it in time.

But they didn’t.

They couldn’t.

Index gave her reasoning.

“If I was there to say goodbye, I know I’d ruin the whole ceremony by crying too loud.”

The cat said nothing in the girl’s arms.

He wasn’t supposed to understand what was going on, but for some reason he seemed to.

===Part 4===

“It’s over,” muttered Aogami Pierce.

All the strength left his body.

He made it sound like his team had just lost a big tournament.

“That’s the end of Kami-yan’s funeral.”

“Pull yourself together. Komoe-sensei is calling us over to get to the crematorium.”

Perhaps Fukiyose found it easier if she focused her mind on a task. She seemed to be constantly searching for a new one.

Aogami rubbed his belly.

“I’m starving… I want to devour my lunch while watching an isekai cooking anime to give a psychological boost to the convenience store bento.”

“How about you chew on a handkerchief?”

Only his classmates were going to the crematorium. As much as they had sobbed during the funeral, the students from other years didn’t wait around before leaving the auditorium. Almost like a movie ad with people making insincere-sounding comments at an advance screening. The kind of ad that made it sound like the record for most moving film of the century was broken every other second.

Aogami saw a busty black-haired upperclassman girl look back toward the stage just once at the exit before leaving.

“Would they even show up if it was us who died?”

“This is better than it could be. Do you ordinarily get teary-eyed seeing the news on TV or online?” dryly asked Fukiyose.

That she sounded more irritable than normal may have been the greatest compliment to Kamijou Touma who had disappeared from their school.

===Part 5===

A woman in a beige habit stood in a city of white and black.

That was Human Aleister Crowley.

The ridiculous artificial rain continued to fall.

The golden retriever stayed by his side in the frigid chill without a word of complaint, but he did ask a question here.

“You aren’t going to see it through to the end?”

“You know all too well I don’t have the courage. Why would I have struggled so much if I did?”

“The regret always comes later.”

“I know that. Better than anyone in the world,” spat Aleister.

He didn’t want to believe it.

She had promised she would break whatever rules were necessary to save the boy.

Had she broken her promise in the end?

That meant there was something even Anna Kingsford couldn’t do.

He knew this was as absurd as wanting your parents to continue to be infallible beings, but still.

“If I could only save that one,” muttered Aleister.

“?”

“That one act would have meant so much. It would have triggered a chain reaction to fix everything. But it failed at the very first domino. …That boy remains dead.”

Kihara Noukan was an unusual genius even for a Kihara, but even he had trouble grasping what Aleister was getting at.

And he knew the human wasn’t going to explain.

Whatever it was, it was a dream that had ended unrealized.

“What now?” asked the dog.

“I wouldn’t be wandering like this if I could answer that.”

Was there any meaning in life now?

His questions had reached that level.

What in this wide world should he tie his existence to?

===Part 6===

The rain was falling.

The funeral in the auditorium had ended, so most of the students were using the walkway to return to the main school building.

They were pinching something and sprinkling it on their heads. It turned out to be salt.

Mikoto sighed softly as she walked out.

“So even the students at his school treat his death as something unclean.”

“I doubt many people in Academy City understand the symbolism. Just like very few people bother looking up the etymology of words like ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’. Most people see it as no more than the done thing, like bowing your head when entering a room. And does it have to be so cold!?”

Shokuhou’s shouted breath was already visible.

And a frigid rain was falling outside.

Shokuhou had started off holding her own shoulders, but once she set her sights on Mikoto, she grabbed onto her.

“Get off, Shokuhou. Kimonos are hard to fix once they start to come undone, so don’t grab onto me.”

“Oh, c’mon. Being a hot-water bottle is about all you’re good for, Misaka-san.”

“Oh, really? Even though I happen to have some hand warmers?”

Shokuhou Misaki petrified.

The corners of her lips twitched.

Her pride appeared to be conflicted over whether or not she should put on a polite smile.

“If you don’t want any, then fine. I’ll seal them away at the bottom of my purse. In the zone where I can’t dig them out again.”

“Wait, Misaka-saaan! You win, I admit it! So please show some love to this Little Match Girl freezing in the winter collllllllld!!”

“You have everyone call you a queen and now you have the nerve to act like the unfortunate Little Match Girl?

Mikoto toyed with the unathletic girl by tossing her hand warmer packs one after another as if to have her juggle them.

…This entire exchange may have been a way of preserving their mental balance. To Mikoto, the forced cheerfulness only made her entire life seem like an act.

“Ahh…☆”

“Hey, where the hell are you shoving that hand warmer, Shokuhou!? What happened to us having a shame culture!?”

The girl was shutting her eyes, trembling, and sighing like she was sinking into a hot spring, but the details were best left unstated.

She was capable of prioritizing what really mattered, meaning she was the type who would decide to nestle together in the nude to stay warm if they were stranded on a snowy mountain in the winter. Mikoto was certain of that now.

The official next to the hearse formed a megaphone with his hands and guided them.

“The buses are over here! Um, if you’re from the school, use bus 1. If you’re a visitor, use bus 2.”

Yes, it wasn’t over yet.

Many umbrellas blossomed like flowers and gathered together.

Carried by the adults.

The coffin was loaded onto the hearse.

The black and gold vehicle was headed to District 10.

Specifically, to the crematorium.

The entire student body wouldn’t fit there, so only what appeared to be Kamjou’s class would be going.

A bus was enough to carry that many.

And a second bus was enough for the visitors.

Another time limit had appeared.

Mikoto saw the distance to the crematorium like the timer ticking down on a time bomb.

But what did that time limit matter at this point?

Death could not be overturned.

It was already over.

“…”

“Ohh, blessed heat ability. Modern conveniences are truly wonderful…”

Next to her, the queen was saying something that suggested a kotatsu was all you needed to win her heart.

The two buses left the rear of the school to follow the hearse. The reporters out front seemed to be making a minor fuss, but the buses had no obligation to wait for them.

No one on the fairly large bus uttered a word.

The GPS navigation system provided a few instructions in a female voice, but the driver appeared to be ignoring them. Maybe there was some kind of etiquette to it, but the hearse seemed to avoid the shortest route and took a longer way to their destination.

In the adjacent seat, Shokuhou whispered briefly while staring out the window being pummeled by raindrops.

“Misaka-saaan.”

“Ugh, what idiot is sending a drone after us?”

With a sparking sound, the multicopter lost control out in the rain.

But who did those persistent reporters want to attack with their articles? Surely it wasn’t Alice Anotherbible or the Transcendents from the hidden side of the world.

“Maybe you could say we sent him to his death too. We didn’t stand in his way and attack him, but we did give him a push from behind.”

“Misaka-san. Malign his resolve and determination again and I will slap you.”

But Shokuhou didn’t actually deny it.

It probably bothered her too.

It was the same when they had fought Christian Rosencreutz. It had required a lot of power to repel him and Kamijou would have been killed if it had been even slightly insufficient.

Even so.

If their power hadn’t been up to the task, would he have considered running away?

“Not likely.”

“Not a chance. I can’t see him giving up on a fight once he started it.”

He hadn’t actually started that fight himself, but no matter how unfairly he was dragged into it, he had always fought to end it. So he could gently untangle the mess of threads.

“…”

It didn’t take very long.

They arrived at the crematorium.

A large roof covered the area in front of the entrance.

Had it been designed with bad weather like this in mind?

It looked like they had to wait for the workers to deal with the coffin.

“Go on, Misaka-san.”

At Shokuhou’s prompting, Mikoto got off the bus.

She wasn’t used to descending a bus’s stairs in Japanese mourning clothes. The clothing was like a single tube, so had it even been designed with climbing and descending stairs in mind?

“Of course it was. Did you forget the stone steps leading up to Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples?”

“Oh, no. Now that idiot is correcting me.”

“Oh? Misaka-san, did you forget I am the intellectual type? Care to see who does better with our next exam ability?”

Come to think of it, didn’t they have five-story pagodas in the Edo period? And those buildings wouldn’t have had elevators or escalators.

Shokuhou Misaki continued to rub the hand warmer against her cheek. It would have run out of heat by now, so was she making use of the placebo effect? Or maybe the cold was making her hallucinate.

An official guided them into the building.

There were numbered tatami mat waiting rooms with cremation chambers lined up.

Maybe there was a rule, but the cremation chambers not in use had their doors wide open. A square metal door led into a closed space seemingly made of brick or blocks. The shape was something like a modified baker’s furnace.

Mikoto peered inside and fell silent.

“…”

It wasn’t even the size of a laundromat.

Yet it felt far too ordered and optimized.

She sighed softly.

(I’m just not used to this.)

It was actually a bit of a relief when she spotted a few old vending machines jumbled together in a corner of the long hallway. She had wanted to see something that threw off the excessive organization of the place.

“It’s nice and warm in the building at least. Ugh, but now I kind of have to use the restroom.”

“I was a fool looking for salvation in a messy idiot like her…”

They could hear the conversation of officials in some room or another.

The voices crept up from the floor like the chill.

“A healthy high school boy? He should have thick bones.”

“We’ll have to burn him for a full four hours. That way there’s no chance any trace of his DNA map or the chemicals used for esper development will remain.”

A heavy scraping sound followed.

It came from something like a piece of pottery the size of a volleyball. Something had caused it to scrape against its lid.

“What does the height chart say? Is this size good?”

That was the funerary urn.

Would a whole person really fit in something so small?

Mourning clothes Mikoto frowned.

“Hold on. I get cremating him, but who gets his ashes?”

“The funerary urn can be transferred to someone else after being placed in the grave.”

Shokuhou’s finger hovered indecisively in front of the vending machine, but she only fidgeted without actually buying any warm coffee. Her fear of artificial additives appeared to be rearing its ugly head again.

“For now, he’ll probably be temporarily buried in a public grave.”

Could they really just do that?

Even as ashes, he would officially count as “remains”.

Besides. His parents apparently weren’t in the city, so who had submitted the notification of death to the government office? Mikoto had thought you couldn’t cremate someone until that had been received.

(Then again, this is the city that buried over ten thousand clones in secret, so they may have some tricks to get around that.)

They entered the waiting room.

The space was about 45 square meters.

Perhaps everyone wanted their own space.

His high school classmates were here, but Mikoto didn’t know any of them very well. She naturally kept her distance.

It was a weird feeling.

Why was she staying by Shokuhou’s side?

And while Mikoto mostly associated funerals with flowers and incense, the scent of burning candles was stronger. Maybe because that scent was a lot more oily.

A large LCD TV sat in the tatami mat room. In addition to over-the-air, and cable, it included an online streaming app. There were also a tablet with a public SIM. That may have been so hot food could be ordered in with a bike delivery service. Mikoto recognized a few of the apps lined up on the screen.

Shokuhou pointed at a sliding screen by the wall that seemed to lead to storage space.

“It looks like they have napping blankets in there.”

“I can’t imagine sleeping here could lead to sweet dreams.”

Four hours.

That explained why they had so many entertainment options for killing time.

“Shokuhou.”

“Yes?”

“Can you last four hours?”

“Sorry, excuse me a moment while I go freshen up.”

Western mourning clothes Shokuhou vanished somewhere with a severe look on her face. She had apparently gone out to visit the ladies room. Unable to relax without anything to focus on, Mikoto grabbed the TV remote and faced the giant screen. The time for New Year’s specials was over. A middle schooler like her had no idea what usually aired on weekday mornings.

(But maybe it would look more authentic if I don’t get all worked up over it?)

You were supposed to smile at New Year’s and cry at funerals.

She was fed up seeing people switch modes as if with a switch or dial.

She flipped through the channels for a bit.

The talk shows were more than she could handle today, so she kept changing the channel to escape them, but that mostly left shopping shows and old dramas.

After settling on a satellite broadcast animal show, she saw an enormous polar bear mercilessly attacking a family of seals. She was taken aback. She had been expecting footage of frolicking kittens or puppies. She wasn’t looking for the bloody and gory reality of nature right now!!

“What are you doing, Misaka-saaan? Why wouldn’t you go for a safe worldwide cruise show?”

That girl returned, looking exasperated.

But why was Shokuhou Misaki so familiar with TV on weekday mornings?

“Are you really a middle schooler?”

“If you’re trying to imply I’m an old lady, I will hit you.”

Something was sitting next to the TV.

At first, Mikoto thought it was a piece of Japanese-style artwork meant to help set the mood.

“Wait…” she said without thinking.

They already had a memorial tablet ready.

At first, Mikoto was confused who it was for. Because the name on it was a dharma name.

“I always thought the name was meant to be symbolic in some way.”

“In Academy City, they apparently have a website that automatically assigns one. Y’know, by tweaking a program ability meant to come up with a pet name if you can’t come up with one yourself.”

Did this city not have the rule where it only counted if it came from an important abbot?

Of course, it seemed like Academy City’s monks were part-timers who also worked as entertainers.

===Part 7===

Inside the District 10 prison, a monitor displayed Anti-Skill officer and high school teacher Yomikawa Aiho as she gave a report.

“The funeral ended without issue.”

“I see.”

“The hearse has left for the crematorium. Here, we’re holding an abbreviated version of the opening ceremony. You’re closer to the crematorium actually.”

The crematorium was in the same district, but that simple fact was far from the new Board Chairman’s mind.

It didn’t feel real.

(Accept his death? Why am I the one saying that shit?)

He had thought he would feel rage when standing on the verge of the death. But now that that line had been crossed, he was supposed to shake off all that emotion? Accelerator couldn’t say anything. Was he facing this like he should, or had his senses simply numbed over?

He couldn’t afford to forget what human warmth felt like.

No matter how many he saved with lifeless methods, he would only be retreading the path of Academy City’s former mistakes.

So what should he do?

Was it more human to let his emotions explode and destroy everything in sight?

“…”

Academy City’s #1 monster looked up.

He couldn’t see heaven there. Only a ceiling made of a special thick armor.

The prison had taken considerable damage from the attack by one of those Transcendents. This room was actually a secondary cell he had been moved to. Still, the white monster hadn’t died. Even though there were plenty of reasons for him to be killed. Was this just how life was?

“What was that bastard thinking dying before the villain,” he muttered.

Death was impartial.

It could visit anyone at any time, no matter how good a person they were, and they would lose their life.

“Aneri.”

An electronic beep.

Of rejection.

Apparently someone else had administrator privileges there. The new Board Chairman didn’t particularly care.

“Qliphah Puzzle 545.”

“Yes, yes. Kee hee hee.”

In that sense, the artificial demon was a lot less trouble.

And she also knew a lot about the world ''beyond'' science.

The #1 had just one question.

“Where is the person who did it?”

===Part 8===

A cold rain was falling.

The ugly rain could not become snow, but it rejected all human warmth while it naturally permeated the city of cutting-edge scientific technology.

The rain stealing heat from the entire city was impartial.

Even in the back alleys.

The countless raindrops falling from the heavens mercilessly located everyone, even a silent and unsteady girl, and soaked them.

She was tall. She wore black leather belts wrapped complexly around her naked body, making her stand out even in Academy City, which was isolated from the outside world.

Her long wavy blonde hair was plastered to her white skin.

She didn’t seem to have even the willpower to brush it away.

“…”

Alice Anotherbible.

She looked up at the sliver of rainy sky visible between the buildings.

And she didn’t move.

She had known that boy would die before they even met.

She had announced it herself.

But he had left the track of survival so that he could save the lives of others.

''“You will die.”

''“That doesn’t change my answer.”

She had seen the boy rushing toward death.

She had thought he might seek help at some point.

But he hadn’t.

''“So fight me!! Alice Anotherbible!!!”

Kamijou Touma had rejected her once.

She had lost sight of herself and resurrected Christian Rosencreutz as she was told.

''“Hold on. You don’t mean…?”

Yes, he had been shaken when he first learned he was doomed to die.

But he had still ultimately chosen the lives of others.

The doomed boy had stuck to his way of life and finally brought Alice Anotherbible back to her senses.

''“…I…”

''“I don’t…”

''“I don’t want to see anyone suffering from even more misfortune than me!! You got a problem with that!?”

He wasn’t coming back.

Alice Anotherbible could easily twist the world to her liking, but that was exactly why the person she had killed could not return. No matter what.

This was the result.

Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the rest of the Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal were no longer here.

That meant Alice Anotherbible was no longer a fearsome leader.

She could trick people into seeing a form of beauty by taking death and violence to their extremes, but that was meaningless without those extremes. Being second best or lower simply made you a troublemaker.

A scratchy voice spoke.

The girl who had lost everything whispered into the emptiness.

“Tea…cher.”

===Part 9===

The final moment had arrived.

They would never see Kamijou Touma’s face again.

The coffin was already closed.

Although it was a Japanese-style coffin, so there was a small double door open over the face,. That small square space seemed to be gradually cut away from the world at large.

“…”

Mikoto reached out her hand a bit and touched his cheek. Softly.

“?”

“Wait. You’d feel bad if you messed up his mortuary makeup at the very end, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, right. It’s just…”

“What?”

Mikoto had no answer for Shokuhou’s quizzical gaze.

Meanwhile, the #5 Queen made her move. She raised a hand to the side of her head and lifted her veil before lowering her head toward the little window.

The instant before she kissed his cheek, Mikoto elbowed her in the side.

Sharply.

“No touching.”

“Ubwogh!? I-I really don’t see what’s so wrong with wishing him good fortune in the next life!!”

“You wouldn’t want to mess up his mortuary makeup, would you? Besides, you’re wearing lipstick.”

Misaka Mikoto had grown up in Academy City where science was everything, but she still knew it would be inappropriate to have him cremated with a lipstick mark on his face.

Each of them wasn’t given much time to say their goodbyes.

Mikoto and Shokuhou moved away.

Aogami Pierce placed a small rectangular object on his close-eyed friend’s pillow.

It was a smartphone.

Fukiyose frowned.

“Are you really allowed to put that in there?”

“Kami-yan was so happy when he got his first smartphone…”

An employee might get mad at him if they found out, but after burning any gold teeth and artificial bones along with the body, they apparently retrieved the rare earths. …And they wouldn’t know what materials had been included in some rich person’s expensive pure gold accessory.

The unsuccessful entertainer who worked part-time as a monk began speaking into the microphone he held.

“Now, everyone, let us once more pray for the deceased’s fortune in the next life. It is now time to say our final goodbye.”

===Part 10===

And.

And.

And then.

===Part 11===

…

…

…

Kamijou Touma silently opened his eyes in a small, dark space.

Yes.

The pointy-haired boy opened his eyes.

“?”

(Where am I? I can’t tell, but this definitely isn’t that artificial hell. Then am I alive again? Did Kingsford actually keep her prom-)

“Bweh, cough! Cough, hack!!”

Now wasn’t the time to be getting emotional.

Something was caught deep in his throat. He desperately coughed until he got a clump of something out. It was too dark to see what it was. He groped around the cramped space until he found something. For whatever reason, a phone was with him in the small box.

That gave him a light.

He tried to open his eyes to see, but something was wrong with his vision.

“Ow!! My eyes hurt!? What the hell!? You’re kidding, right!? Is there something in them!?”

He hesitantly pinched his eyelid and used the other hand’s index finger to feel around. It was big. He pulled something larger than a 100yen coin from under his eyelids. He checked with with the LED light and found it was absorbent cotton heavy with his tears. He shuddered.

And the thing that had been in hist throat appeared to be some kind of cloth.

Maybe to keep his tongue from falling back into his throat or maybe to keep insects from getting inside his body? He hadn’t known they did all that at funerals.

And something else gradually dawned on him.

This was not a hospital morgue. He had thought it was one of those locker-like storage spaces seen in TV dramas, but it wasn’t. He didn’t feel chilly at all.

That only left one possibility.

“Wait…”

He was lying face up in a space too small to move much. He smelled wood and flowers all around him. The ceiling? He sensed the wood less than 30cm away. Relying on the phone light, he tried pressing on it with his palm and the resistance vanished sooner than expected. Oh? It wasn’t heavy at all?

No.

He had only opened a small double door that had already been there. About 20cm across.

“Wait, wait, wait…”

The space beyond the little window was dark too. And it smelled of metal. After all the cheap meals he had cooked in his dorm, he recognized what he was seeing.

That was a fish grill.

Except this one was large enough to cook an entire human being.

“Ubwahhhhhh!! Does that mean I’m in the crematorium!!?”

Understanding your circumstances was important.

Because now the squeezing at his heart was so much stronger.

Did that mean the wooden box he was inside was a coffin!? He pushed on the actual cover with his palms to try and get out this time, but…oh, no. It wasn’t opening. It didn’t appear to be nailed shut. It would open upwards a few centimeters before something stopped it. Apparently the cremation chamber itself was short, so the coffin door was hitting the top.

Wait, did that mean he couldn’t get out?

If he stayed here like this, he had a strong feeling they really would ignite the chamber!

“Help!! I know it’s way too late for this, but Kamijou Touma is alive, so you all need to waiiiiiiiit!!”

He screamed with all his might…but did it do any good?

There was no reaction.

He wasn’t even certain his voice could be heard outside the chamber. He had never been to a crematorium before, but didn’t the cremation chambers have thick metal walls? And he was Academy City’s Mr. Misfortune. It was looking more likely he was going to go unnoticed and be roasted due to this careless mistake. A lot more likely.

“Th-th-th-the ph-ph-phone! I need to call someone outside and- mgwah!? Why doesn’t it have a signal!? Because the walls are so thick!? Is this stone and metal cremation chamber blocking the signal!?”

It didn’t look like he could count on any help from outside.

He would have to crawl out on his own.

However, the space was so small. It didn’t seem like the coffin lid would be able to open inside the cremation chamber, but that just meant he needed to get creative.

“Hnh!!”

Specifically, he moved to one side of the rectangular coffin to shift the center of gravity. Then he rolled up onto the side. Like rolling around in a giant ball, he tilted the entire coffin over 90 degrees.

There would be more horizontal than vertical space.

He could finally push on the large lid and escape the coffin…or so he thought before a powerful blow hit his back. He choked hard and then realized he had fallen off of something. The ceiling had seemed so low because the coffin had been sitting on something like a stretcher. The metal scent was a lot stronger now. Still, the place was dark and he knew he was inside a giant fish grill that would burn his flesh and bones using city gas. Even now, he assumed the emotional goodbyes were solemnly approaching their climax. If he waited around, he would meet the same fate as a saury prepared by a childhood friend who was a terrible cook.

(How long until they ignite it? Damn, I can’t hear any voices from outside!!)

It might happen an hour from now, but it also might happen a minute from now.

Either way, he was done for once it happened.

Kamijou aimed the phone around and discovered steel pipes as thick as his thumb running near the low ceiling. He chose not to imagine what the black soot he saw was primarily composed of. In fact, he worked very hard to not think about it. The shape of the place was indeed similar to a fish grill. That meant it had a few gas sprayers and spark plugs.

(I’m screwed if those work properly.)

“!! Oh, hell!!”

Or to put it another way, he had to destroy them if he wanted to live! He grabbed at whatever he could and yanked until a pipe came away with a dull snap.

He couldn’t celebrate yet.

A horrible stench stabbed into his nose.

A threat familiar to anyone who used a kitchen clutched at his heart. Even more strongly than before.

(Wait a second. Is that city gas?)

“Gwohhhhh!! Doesn’t that mean this chamber is filling with gas, even if it isn’t burning!? Then I’m going to suffocate and die anyway!!”

He had no idea if he had increased or decreased his time limit.

Flailing about wasn’t going to help.

He knew what he had to do. He had to get out of here. No matter what.

There was nothing like a chimney. He assumed it did have an exhaust vent somewhere, but he couldn’t find it with his phone’s light. Was there a small hole hidden in some gap somewhere? At the very least, it didn’t seem likely he could sneak out through a duct like an action movie star.

That left only one option.

The only exit was the door he had been shoved in through.

“Kh.”

(But will it open? I don’t know much about funerals, but aren’t cremation chamber doors made of really thick metal!?)

He desperately shined his phone’s LED lights that way…and didn’t see a knob. In fact, he was surprised to find the back of the metal door was covered in stuff. A few metal panels and joints fit together complexly.

That was probably the mechanism that allowed the door to be opened by a large lever on the outside.

Did it look like one big panel on the outside, but this opening and closing gimmick was hidden on the back?

Which meant…

“Can I break it open by kicking at this stuff?”

…The problem was the flammable city gas beginning to fill the interior of the chamber.

If he waited, he would definitely suffocate and die, but what if two metal pieces collided and produced a spark?

Accept it.

Trust in hope.

Giving into fear will only mean suffocating.

“Open.”

He had to do it.

Even if he was terrified and even if his heart was raising a scream so soon after beginning to beat once more.

Kamijou Touma repeatedly slammed his heel against the complex stopper on the back of the cremation chamber door.

“Opeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!!!”

===Part 12===

It came from within.

The metal door was kicked down with a loud roar.

Everyone gasped.

There was a voice.

''Today is my January birthday.

:''Today is the day I was born.

::''I am the star of this wonderful birthday.

''Today is my January birthday.

He was dressed in burial clothes.

A triangle of cloth was tied to the forehead below his pointy hair.

It was definitely him who crawled on out.

And he spoke.

“Hi there, everyone! Sorry if I surpri-”

“Eeeek, a zombie! It’s going to infect us all with who knows what!!!”

They didn’t even let him finish his sentence.

Tears welled up in the eyes of the corner-of-the-classroom boy who didn’t get to be the star even after coming back from the dead.

Panic and pandemonium were already setting in.

Of course they were.

Based on his phone’s screen, it hadn’t just been a few minutes since he died. Anyone would be terrified if someone who’s heart had long since stopped beating suddenly got back up.

(I’m grateful you brought me back to life, but couldn’t you have worked a little faster, Kingsford!?)

“Abababawawa, no, no, it’s true I, Kamijou Touma, died, but I’m alive again, and I mean, technically today isn’t my birthday, but can’t you please give me a more peaceful reaction along the lines of what you would do if a cardiac massage work-”

“Quiet, everyone! Quiet!! Take deep breaths to calm yourselves and stay where you are. Now, what were you doing in there? Who are you!?”

The extremely part-time monk was shouting into his microphone.

Then Kamijou heard a strange mechanical sound.

Someone was coming.

These people were wearing shiny silver armor that covered them from head to toe.

No, were those powered suits?

“Is that the exceptional remains!?”

“Commence incineration.”

They were holding something at their hips.

They looked like a fire fighter’s hose, but not quite.

A small lighter-sized flame flickered in front of the nozzle.

“Flamethrowers!!?”

How well prepared were they!?

Why did they have a unit like this already on standby? Did corpses have a habit of getting back up in this city!?

Anyway, he couldn’t let himself be roasted after just narrowly escaping that fate.

He had no choice but to run barefoot out of the crematorium.

“Damn!!”

Kamijou Touma threw open the frosted glass window and climbed out.

Frigid rain was falling outside.

''And the girl who pointed at me and called me a zombie right after I came back to life – that was Fukiyose, wasn’t it? Kamijou-san isn’t about to forget that!!

===Part 13===

Kamijou Touma wasn’t the only one in trouble.

Aogami Pierce, Fukiyose Seiri, and the others left in the crematorium were in no position to just stare.

The situation was on the move.

“Whoa!?”

They heard a “fwoosh!!” sound.

It came from right outside the window. More people in powered suits were spraying something out of large canisters. It was reminiscent of spraying agrochemicals on a field, but these weren’t pesticides. The outside of the window soon grew thick and translucent.

Aogami Pierce couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Is that a plastic glue? That’s like a more impressive version of the security sheets you put on windows.”

“With that, they can quarantine a location in less than 5 minutes. Now I doubt any person or any bacteria or viruses can get in or out.”

At field hospitals, thick plastic sheets were used to demarcate a space while air curtains controlled the air currents, but was this a more advanced version of that?

Then Fukiyose commented on the a phrase she had used that had caught her attention.

“Any person…?”

“A corpse just woke up and ran off. That qualifies as an emergency in my book. Did it not occur to you that we’re trapped inside here now?”

But the reaction had been too quick.

Kamijou Touma’s remains getting up and fleeing the crematorium was certainly a shock, but not even a few minutes had passed since then.

That speed was only possible if those people had been on standby to begin with.

It meant they must always monitor the cremations of anyone who had died under “suspicious circumstances”.

“(If they were this well prepared, does this kind of thing happen from time to time in Academy City?)”

“(Anything can happen here. I mean, this city creates superhuman Level 5s.)”

None of it sounded real.

Kamijou Touma had gotten up. That much was true.

But what exactly had happened? Saying a mystery virus was responsible sounded plausible enough, but it lacked the weight of reality. That was the same as saying ghosts were actually plasma. Smugly explaining that in a dark abandoned building did nothing to put your mind at ease.

And that aside…

“What happens to us now?” asked Aogami.

“Trying to move from here could be dangerous.”

That she didn’t scoff at his question meant Fukiyose was aware they were trapped in here.

This wasn’t like daydreaming about fighting terrorists during a boring class.

The entire building was sealed off from the outside by thick plastic walls. A mop or a metal bat weren’t going to break through the windows. Even a gun probably wouldn’t be enough. A specialized gas proof door had been set up as the only way in or out, but the powered suits were gathered around it.

And someone was loudly approaching from there.

At some point the number of powered suits had grown past 10.

“Quiet, everyone! We are Bio Secure!”

This person also wore a powered suit.

Maybe anything seemed suspicious when viewed in that light, but it felt like they were intentionally making themselves indistinguishable from each other. Like robbers in masks.

“Your movement will be temporarily restricted, but please do not worry. Once we ensure you are safe, you will be released, so I ask that you cooperate and avoid causing a disturbance.”

He “asked that” they cooperate, but he showed no sign of waiting for a yes or no response from them.

He was actually telling them to resist at their peril.

He made it clear who was in charge here.

How were they supposed to “not worry” when he was wearing a fully-sealed powered suit and equipped with a flamethrower? It was written on his hidden face that there was likely something invisible in the air and that his team would be fine.

“W-wait…” protested a pale-faced crematorium worker.

Even the adults didn’t know what this was.

That only worried Aogami Pierce and Fukiyose Seiri more. And they doubted Komoe-sensei was going to be much help here.

“Wait a second! What is happening? The paperwork said nothing about infectious disease, but are we safe? And do we have permission to continue running this facility!?”

“We are not authorized to answer that. Chief ''Kihara Goukei'' has yet to arrive, but she will explain everything once she does. Hold your questions until then.”

A sound a lot like steam followed.

The powered suits were tossing things into a large rectangular glass vat full of powerful acid. They were quite casual about it, probably because the splashing liquid and smoke wouldn’t harm them any.

Those were the bouquets and Kamijou Touma’s possessions prepared for the funeral.

They of course didn’t ask anyone’s permission first.

It had been through a screen, but during the funeral Aogami Pierce had seen the tearful face of that father enraged over his son’s death. The items he and his wife were meant to receive were all being heartlessly dissolved.

Even if this had been a performance put together by professionals, the sight seemed to fully reject the gentle atmosphere of the day.

His breathing was shallow and a cold sweat wouldn’t stop pouring down his brow, but Aogami may still not have accurately grasped the threat. If he had, he could easily have collapsed from hyperventilation.

If he couldn’t take advantage of his own ignorance here, he was in trouble.

His instincts told him so.

What was going to happen to them?

Would they be infected?

If they were, would that be done to them too?

But the situation was advancing whether he liked it or not.

A short distance away, one powered suit was speaking to another.

“What is it?”

“Chief Kihara Goukei has arrived.”

===Part 14===

The dead had come back to life.

Did that qualify as a good thing or a bad thing?

And this was Academy City.

If he was captured, he would either be sent to a lab to be soaked in formalin or he would be directly roasted by flamethrower.

Either way…

“I’m screwed!! My life is over if I’m caught!!”

Kamijou Touma ran outside in the frigid rain.

His burial clothes, which were one step removed from being a Halloween costume, did nothing to keep out the cold. And he was barefoot. Keep in mind it was January. Being stuck out in the rain dressed like this would kill him within an hour of coming back to life!!

“Ahh, brrr. There aren’t even any soaked girls caught in the sudden summer downpour. Winter sucks. There’s nothing at all good about being wet in this season.”

The city had been badly damaged.

The cumulative affect of the battles against Anna Sprengel, Christian Rosencreutz, and Alice Anotherbible really had left it close to collapse. The repairs could not keep up, so construction scaffolding and soundproofing sheets could be seen all over the place.

Kamijou Touma had received that same deadly force with his flesh-and-blood body.

That explained why it was so unusual for him to be alive.

He heard a groaning “gashunk!!” sound.

That was the sound of a powered suit’s artificial muscles operating.

“Dammit, they’re so fast!!”

Powered suit legs could run at 40-50km/h without the help of wheels or a car motor.

An ordinary human couldn’t hope to escape them while running along a wide street on foot.

“Kh.”

They had nearly caught up.

The powered suit’s thick fingers were approaching the back of his neck.

“Damn!!”

He clicked his tongue and changed direction.

He slid across the wet pavement, slipped below a soundproofing sheet, and tumbled into the construction site for repairs on a nearby building.

Sites like this could be found just about anywhere thanks to the battles against powerful foes like Anna Sprengel, Christian Rosencreutz, and Alice Anotherbible.

He heard the snapping of breaking metal.

After the powered suit’s thick fingers had found only air, it had easily torn through the exterior barricade made of soundproofing sheets and metal panels.

It worked like the building demolition beaks attached to the end of a mechanical arm.

A hit from that would smash his body apart even if it only caught on his clothes a little.

“Why aren’t we authorized to use our flamethrowers!?”

“Ask Chief Kihara Goukei. She’s the boss of Bio Secure, not us.”

He heard some terrifying voices from behind, but he couldn’t just stop.

The sounds of thick metal tearing apart continued.

The pursuing powered suits didn’t bother going around or climbing over obstacles. They would shove a stack of pipes aside with a single arm or tackle through a forest of erected steel beams, causing an entire half-repaired building to tilt.

Getting caught in any of that would be the end of Kamijou.

He couldn’t stay here in the construction site.

“Eek!!”

The loud and heavy sounds of bending metal filled the air.

Two of the rapidly-moving powered suits appeared to have collided.

“Y-your suit’s lost integrity!”

“Don’t worry about me and go on ahead! Hurry!!”

“Stop acting all heroic while brandishing flamethrowers! It’s terrifying!” shouted Kamijou, bristling as he fled.

In their minds, they weren’t ganging up on a victim to bully him – they seemed to truly see themselves as fighting to protect Academy City. Which meant they would not compromise or let their guard down. But so what? Someone who could emotionally kill a stranger without second thought was a terrible person in Kamijou’s book.

Kamijou spotted a slope leading underground, so he raced down it. He was expecting an underground mall, but was instead hit by a mass of malodorous air. He had apparently wandered into a culvert where a river ran below the city.

On the floor, he found large wireless communication equipment, professional-looking tools, and a long power cable leading somewhere.

Apparently repairs were underway here as well.

He was afraid of giving away his position, but it was dark in here. Missing a step and falling into the winter river would be no laughing matter, so he suppressed the fear and switched on the LED light.

“The all-purpose smartphone really is one of humanity’s greatest inventions.”

He wished he could just call Anti-Skill and have them come to the rescue, but he got the impression he couldn’t trust in the grownups’ systems.

Where was the exit?

Was heading outside even his best option?

Or should he hide out in this labyrinthine underground structure until his pursuers had moved on?

And how many minutes would he have to wait until he considered that plan a success?

He had too many unanswered questions.

Behind him, he heard the “gashunk, gashunk” of machines operating. Were they still after him!?

(But they’re not moving as fast as before. Did they not have night vision gear because it’s still daytime, or are they afraid of falling in the water and sinking like a rock?)

He thought he would pass out from the fear if he didn’t force his thoughts in a positive direction.

He had to keep running and escape.

It was all so unfair.

He was moments away from death, but for some reason he found laughter spilling from his lips as he ran away soaking wet.

He couldn’t stop.

“Ha ha ha…”

He was afraid of dying.

Of course he was.

Because no matter what anyone might say, Kamijou Touma was alive!!

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!”

He was alive.

He had never felt so aware of the life within him.

He wasn’t a ghost or a zombie or anything like that.

Being human was such a wonderful feeling!!

Although if Anna Kingsford saw this, she might hold a hand to her head in exasperation or she might bring her fist down on his head.

(Still…)

Chief Kihara Goukei.

They had used the name Kihara.

Was it the same Kihara?

In addition to the business with Kihara Kagun, he was pretty sure he had heard that name associated with the incident where he first met Alice Anotherbible. That operation had been meant to clean up the dark side lurking in Academy City’s shadows, but outside influence had twisted it into a great tragedy. Many people had died. But…they were still there.

“Doe that mean that dark side thing is still alive and kicking after all that? Dammit!”

He heard an ominous roar.

That was the sound of flames sucking in oxygen.

He looked back while running and his eyes widened. A fireball of a flame flickered in the air.

That was the tip of a flamethrower.

“A-are you kidding me!?”

Even thought it branched off every which way, this was still an enclosed space. Bio Secure might survive thanks to their thick powered suits and oxygen supplies, but Kamijou would either be instantly fried or would suffocate with his lungs roasted.

(I thought that Kihara person wasn’t letting them use those!)

It was too late to complain now.

And maybe it had been wrong to count on the enemy’s situation remaining unchanged.

Without hesitation, the flamethrower nozzle aimed his way spewed an oxidant and a jelly-like liquid combustible material.

And a moment later…

It exploded.

“Wahgyahhh!!!”

Kamijou was soaked with sweat as he leaped down a different branching path.

What?

He was still alive, but what was that!?

There had been flames, but that wasn’t right. If the flamethrower had been functioning normally, he knew he should have been wrapped in flames himself. The powered suit had done something wrong. Because it was the pursuer who had ended up on fire.

White fire.

What kind of explosion was that?

It had seemed like something at the powered suit’s feet had exploded immediately after the flamethrower was activated.

(Was that acetylene gas used for welding!?)

That special flammable gas was used to create the ultra-high temperature flames needed to melt and combine reinforcing steel. The powered suit appeared to be designed to withstand the heat of a flamethrower, but an explosion of that stuff at such close range had to have damaged it at least some.

Kihara Goukei was it?

This may have been part of the reason why the powered suits’ boss had banned them from using their flamethrowers. With propane, city gas, and more, the densely populated city contained a surprising amount of flammables and explosives. The recovery had finally begun after the many battles. There was even the possibility of unexploded shells or missiles lying around.

“Pant, gasp!!”

Anyway, Kamijou Touma was alive.

If he continued playing tag with these powered suits, he would be killed. If he was going to escape, it had to be now while they were panicked over their own screw up.

Bio Secure(?), or whatever they were called, didn’t seem worried inside the steel-melting flames.

He felt their gaze on him.

And heard a straining sound.

They were having trouble, but they only had to wait until their suits managed to reboot inside the flames. Kamijou know he couldn’t destroy them by going on the offensive. Once their self-scans and error recovery was complete, he would be out of options. He wouldn’t be able to escape.

So move your legs.

The culvert was one step removed from a sewer. He was worn out from all the strenuous exercise, but he wasn’t at all inclined to lean against the wall. He used his phone’s LED light to walk down a small side path in the dark culvert that stank of sludge and he eventually found a small door.

Maybe it was for work access and maybe it was an emergency exit, but on the other side, narrow stairs led up toward the surface.

“Wheeze, wheeze…”

He was right back out in the rainy world.

He honestly didn’t feel at all like he had escaped.

He was certain the flamethrower-wielding powered suits would find him again soon enough.

Was coming back from the dead really so difficult?

This was nothing like the emotional reactions to a miraculous experience he had been expecting.

(But what do I do now? If I’m supposed to be dead, my dorm room might be gone. And it doesn’t look like anyone I know will be any help.)

“?”

He spotted a camera-equipped security robot and instinctively moved from the main road to an alley to hide.

He felt like he was moving further and further from the sun.

At this rate, was he going to find himself crawling underneath a flower pot in the schoolyard?

“Also.”

Being dead had scared him.

Finding some way of returning to life had been the only thing on his mind.

But.

Could it be?

“Does no one want a world with me in it?”

He hung his head.

It really hurt.

Then again, he was only a high school boy. He wasn’t some important Buddhist priest whose remains would be preserved after death. So maybe there just wasn’t anyone who wanted to see him again badly enough to deal with something as bizarre as this…

He had died and come back.

Being killed by Alice Anotherbible had complicated matters this time, but he had actually already experienced something similar a few times with full-power Othinus and Good, Old Mary…but was it just different once the pieces on the board had made it as far as the funeral? Instead of just physically dying, his death had been socially accepted this time. It took dying for him to realize death happened in stages.

A whirring motor sound passed by overhead.

“Eek!?”

Now wasn’t the time to be waxing philosophical.

Kamijou released a quick shriek and then hid below an air conditioner attached to the wall in the narrow alley. The flying drone passed by. The dark side was supposed to have declined and they could still do all this? He really didn’t want to be found by the adults right now. They did have flamethrowers after all!

And that hadn’t just been a scout.

It wasn’t harmless.

It was very different from one of these drum-shaped security robots.

Specifically, an object the size of a rugby ball was hanging down from it. He couldn’t be certain, but he was pretty sure that was an anti-tank rocket.

If it had noticed him and fired that, he would have been blown to pieces along with this corner of the alley. That 8000yen-a-pop explosive was enough to fully change the meaning of the electronic device.

It was over once he was caught.

Kamijou Touma desperately held his breath.

Maybe he was doing something incredibly stupid. After all, it wasn’t a living creature. Staying still behind cover like this might not matter depending on what kinds of sensors it was using to scan the surface.

The next 30 seconds seemed to scorch his heart.

And that was assuming his sense of time was accurate.

The drone indifferently flew off. Like nothing had happened.

In that final moment, its motion seemed somehow human, so it was possible it had shifted from programmed flight to remote manual control.

Regardless, that meant the threat had passed…right?

“Phew…”

Thanks to that assumption, it caught him completely by surprise.

While all his focus was overhead, he heard a noise from straight ahead.

A quiet footstep.

Someone was there.

The person was frozen in place, staring wide-eyed at him.

She was tall and beautiful. Her long wavy blonde hair was wet with rain and her skinny body was tightly bound by black leather belts, making for a strange manner of dress even for Academy City.

She was a Transcendent.

Alice Anotherbible.

She was frozen in apparent surprise, widened eyes directed his way.

“Y-you can…see me???”

The idiot had so lost his faith in humanity he had to ask that in a trembling voice.

Tears welled up in the corners of the girl’s eyes.

Large ones.

The cold rain was still falling, but these drops were noticeably different and carried body heat.

“T-””

She was stiff and trembling.

And…

“Teacher!!”

She spread her arms and leaped at him.

Her momentum was too much for him, so Kamijou Touma toppled back onto his rear.

Yes, he could feel her.

Her hair wet with the cold rain, her skin, her sweet scent, and her high-pitched voice piercing into his ears. Sensations the dead could never experience bewildered his senses and stabbed directly into his brain. Kamijou Touma was alive, including those brains.

…I thought I would never see you again.

His heart had stopped, his brain’s neural network had been shredded, and he had fully died.

Saying he would return to life had been an absurd fantasy.

Yet he had done it.

He had returned alive from hell.

However, he didn’t deserve the credit there.

That hell had been an artificial one that Christian Rosencreutz had created to resurrect himself and Anna Kingsford had hijacked control of it. And she hadn’t hesitated to hand the resurrection ticket to Kamijou Touma.

He had been saved every step of the way.

The pointy-haired boy hadn’t accomplished anything on his own. Those true experts had done it for him.

They had taught him what it means to save people.

But.

He hadn’t done the wrong thing.

He had finally found something in this half-destroyed world that convinced him of that.

“You’re alive, you’re here, ohh, the girl can touch you, teacher is really here. Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

No matter how cold the rain was, he could feel this girl’s warmth beyond it.

Returning to life was meaningless?

Don’t be ridiculous.

There was a girl here letting him experience something he never would have if he hadn’t returned to the world of the living.

“Thank goodness… Teacher, you’re breathing, you’re alive. The girl, uh, the girlllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!!!”

She couldn’t even get her words out.

Still slumped down, Kamijou Touma placed a hand on sobbing Alice’s head.

He could touch her.

He could influence things.

He could save a single crying girl.

The pointy-haired boy was undoubtedly alive here.

“Heh…”

What an awful day.

He had taken so long to return to life that now he was seen as the living dead. They seemed to think he was infected with some kind of Academy City something, so a group of adults with flamethrowers was after him.

But.

Nevertheless…

“Coming back to life…was definitely the right move.”

He could finally say that.

For today at least, he could smile.

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume11 Chapter4

2025-03-12T00:02:18Z

Churronzon: it’s > its

==Chapter 4: I’d Wanted To Do This With You – Duel_and_Struggle,_XXX.Revenge.==

===Part 1===

Kamijou Touma and Christian Rosencreutz.

The result of a direct battle between the two of them should have had an obvious result. Before, Academy City had gathered all its forces to oppose that man and Kamijou had relied on the Dragon Strike emerging from his right arm, but he had still failed to fully defeat him and Alice Anotherbible had needed to deliver the finishing blow.

He was that much of a monster.

If a mere high school boy faced him, it was a foregone conclusion that he would be turned to mincemeat in less than a second.

''And yet.

''Pop!!!

The instant Kamijou swung his right hand horizontally, something in the empty air burst and vanished.

Everything about this hell was twisted and wrong.

The right hand that acted as a reference point negated and destroyed the magic of the living that was considered out of place by that negative world.

In that moment, it wasn’t Kamijou Touma whose eyes widened in surprise. It was Christian Rosencreutz who had held his palm straight out from a short distance away.

The puny boy was a step ahead of CRC.

That alone should have been impossible.

“!!”

Rosencreutz slashed his fingers through the air a few more times, but still he could not hit.

Kamijou swung his right hand in the same way, negating each extraordinary piece magic just before it hit.

They were evenly matched.

They were fighting on equal footing.

Was it Imagine Breaker?

No, that wasn’t enough to explain this.

The boy shouted at his opponent.

“What’s next, CRC? Citrinitas? Or maybe the Pneuma-less Shell!?”

“!?”

A giant silver sphere slammed down behind the red-clad young man. Kamijou’s prediction was correct. Rosencreutz finally realized that his actions were being predicted. He panicked as he reached behind himself and rotated the round handle to randomly produce one of the world’s oldest causes of death.

It produced a thin tree branch.

That was the world’s oldest whip. But that cause of death had to have more openings than uranium or plutonium.

Did bad luck tend to stack?

Conversely, the momentum and trend were tilting in Kamijou’s favor. Which was unusual thanks to his misfortune.

That meant something other than luck was controlling this.

CRC clicked his tongue and tossed the tree branch aside.

“What did you do? Boy, nothing about your body has changed. Or is this old man expected to believe that a boy with no knowledge of magic manipulated this entire hell to produce something to your advantage!?”

That wasn’t the answer.

Kamijou couldn’t possibly control hell.

The answer was much simpler, which may have been why that overthinking expert had missed it.

“We walked through hell together, didn’t we?”

That brief explanation was his immediate answer.

“You haven’t forgotten, have you, Rosencreutz? When we fought you in Academy City, it was our first time seeing any of it. None of us knew who the legendary CRC was or what he could do. It was new to us. So we had no choice but to run defenseless into it all! …But that’s changed. I’ve seen all your spells. And more than that, I know you’re actually Johann Valentin Andreae! I know how you use everything at your disposal and I know how you use familiar attacks to trap us!! No matter how strong you are, this isn’t the same as our last battle!!!”

And it wasn’t just Kamijou who had drawn out Rosencreutz’s various methods of attack back in Academy City.

Anti-Skill had been there. And Judgment.

Misaka Mikoto, Aradia, Index, and Aleister had all been there.

Kamijou had to remember the home he was to return to.

The life he still had ahead of him.

The people waiting for him in Academy City.

Kamijou could only stand here now because of the cards they had each flipped over.

He now understood both CRC’s tactics and Johann’s way of thinking.

No longer did he have to agonize over this game of concentration.

Once it was his turn, he could take all the cards for himself!!

“No…”

CRC audibly gulped.

He couldn’t believe it, but he also couldn’t deny what was happening here.

Because he was wiser than anyone else.

“You cannot make up for your inferior skill that way. You are no more than a high school boy, while this old man is the Christian Rosencreutz of legend. Nothing can ever fill the endless gap between us!”

Kingsford then spoke to the shocked-looking silver-haired young man in red.

As if returning to the start of the boy’s words.

“Have you forgotten, CRC?”

“…”

“You left after Alice ☠️ed you and have spent the rest of your ⌚ holed up in your false hell preparing for your resurrection, but ❌ so for him. He lived on after that. It was ❌ for long, but in that ⌚, Kamijou Touma defeated Alice Anotherbible.”

“He…what?”

“On his own. Without relying on 🐉 Strike.”

He finally fell silent.

Common reality had surpassed his imagination.

“Kamijou Touma has already done one thing that CRC could ❌. Do you 💭 he gained nothing from that?”

The benevolent expert was unshaken.

The simple act of living was precious in and of itself.

Those words would sound so cheesy coming from an ordinary person, but Kingsford properly understood their meaning. So even as she easily crossed between life and death, Anna Kingsford would never treat lives and souls with anything but the utmost care.

“The ☠️ are forever stuck in place, but the living are always growing. A puny boy? Do ❌ assume he is the same as he was when you ⚔️ him.”

On his own, Kamijou Touma might have understood this intellectually, but his body wouldn’t have kept up.

But he had that benevolent expert with him.

Kingsford supported and realized the inexperienced boy’s ideas.

And the opposite, the expert who brought only death and destruction, responded.

While cynically returning to the same starting point.

“But did you forget, boy?”

===Part 2===

Kamijou heard a low rumbling.

And felt a tremor.

Th entire hell shrouded in darkness began to shake vertically.

Christian Rosencreutz spread his arms wide and made an announcement.

With great force.

“This old man built this hell on his own. The two of you are no more than unwelcome visitors. So this old man can control this false hell at will!!”

According to Kingsford, this was not the “real” hell.

Christian Rosencreutz – or Johann Valentin Andreae – had constructed this temporary collection of images in order to forcibly shove this dead soul back into the living world. That was the purpose of this hell.

So it was best to assume he could freely control anything here.

Which meant…

With a great crash, something fell straight down as if from heaven to earth.

For an instant, Kamijou thought it was holy divine punishment.

But that had no place in hell.

It was something like an ultra-high pressure water jet.

If Kingsford hadn’t immediately pushed him aside, Kamijou would have been bisected before he could even think. Bisected vertically.

“The Acheron, the Styx, and the Phlegethon – you have redirected the rivers flowing through the levels of hell to use them as a weapon, haven’t you? Those special rivers act as the border between life and ☠️ and prevent the living or the ☠️ from reaching the wrong side. By forcibly increasing the pressure for use as a direct attack, the 🌊s work their way deep inside the target, allowing you to make use of their ‘division into two parts’ power.”

“Sorry, Kingsford-sensei, but can you just tell me what I’m supposed to be looking out for as I fight!? If something like that hits me, it’s all over, but I don’t know what kind of initial action to look out for to dodge it. Hurry, Sensei!”

“This is only the beginning. Much more is coming.”

“Yes, of course that was only the beginning!!” roared Rosencreutz.

“You stupid geniuses move too fast! Stop skipping three steps in your head and actually explain everything one step at a time!!”

Kamijou’s tearful shouting received a gentle sigh from Kingsford.

“You do ❌ understand?” asked the glasses woman.

“Understand what!?”

“Hell is shaped like a mortar that narrows in toward the center. So if hell as a whole shakes violently, all the giant objects that appeared on the various levels along the slope will come rolling down to the bottom.”

“Wait, are you serious?”

“You should assume that every single level of hell you have seen thus far will now be your enemy.”

It wasn’t just the one thing.

A big stone gate dropped like a meteor. Was that the gate into hell? If that happened to hit Kamijou, he would be smashed into little pieces. And it wasn’t just structures. The bull-headed minotaur and Nyx-chan slinging around dark sludge came tumbling down as well.

This was worse than just falling rocks.

A single hit from any of this would mean instant death.

…Or wait. Would he remain conscious even after being smashed into a pulp? But if he couldn’t move, then CRC could torment him at his leisure.

And he would have no way of stopping CRC from climbing the spiral staircase back to life.

“Whoa!?” shouted Kamijou as a whole bunch of objects fell in front of him.

Something else came rolling down the mortar-shaped hell. And if it came from the higher levels, it had to be something he had seen during their journey here.

It was a giant breast.

“Now ''this'' is divine punishment!!!”

He leaped aside to dodge it.

He had forgotten that his worldly thoughts had caused that to appear on a higher level of hell. And thinking back, they had just left it there, hadn’t they?

He had just about been killed by his own sin.

But diving once wasn’t enough to make him safe. He scrambled back to his feet and ran full speed away from there, but this wasn’t like a round soccer ball. The mountain-sized breast was much more dangerous in how it bounced every which way as it rolled.

It was going to kill him.

He was going to be killed by a giant breast.

But once he started running, he couldn’t stay on the ground forever. This was the bottom of the mortar-shaped hell, so there was only so much space.

He had no choice but to trust in the sturdiness of the thick layer of ice and head out onto the frozen lake in the center.

Ironic that he had to trust in something about this hell that was thoroughly unkind to anyone inside it.

“I-I just have to go for it… I’m sure there’s still plenty of stuff still caught up on the higher levels. Oh, right. I forgot about Kingsford’s armpit and giant butt. I don’t want to be crushed to death by those, so I have to risk the ice!! Isn’t that right, Sensei!!?”

“…”

This was an exceedingly serious situation with their lives and the outcome of the battle on the line, yet the benevolent expert did not agree with him as she held a hand to her cheek with a smile frozen on her face. She looked as gentle as ever, but the pressure radiating from her was terrifying.

But that wasn’t his biggest concern.

With so many things falling from higher up in the mortar-shaped hell, they couldn’t stay on the outer edge forever. So they had to walk out onto the thick frozen lake. That much he knew.

But that layer of ice was not just ice.

There was a lord there.

“Hey, Kingsford?”

“Yes, what is it?”

“So, uh, since Rosencreutz can control and attack us with everything in this hell, is that giant thing lurking in the shadows going to attack us too!?”

“The six-🪽ed being at the center of the 🧊 is known as the 👑 of the 👿s or the 👑 of hell. Some 💬 he is Satan, some 💬 Beelzebub, and others 💬 Lucifer.”

“I don’t care what his name is! Besides, those are all top-level star players, aren’t they!?”

“Well, he is the big boss at the bottom of hell.”

Fair point.

Finding a tiny goblin or pixie awaiting them all the way down here would be terrifying in its own way. Because that monster would probably be extremely high level.

A low straining sound reached them.

Coming from the beyond the veil of shadow.

From the lord – or core – of hell.

Seeing that would be deadly.

Kamijou was certain of it despite the fact that you couldn’t die in hell, even if your whole body were burned to a crisp or you were skewered through. He could tell that seeing that thing was the one exception and a single attack would be enough to shatter his soul.

And for some reason, Christian Rosencreutz had his arms spread as he leaped forcefully toward those shadows.

And a loud voice came from the shadows.

“Fus☆ion!”

“Ahhhh!! Someone stop that childish old maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!”

Kingsford slammed her fist down in empty air and (however it worked) Rosencreutz crashed down into the ice lake while only a meter away from the lord of demons.

That was a close one.

His transformation sequence had been stopped before he cast off his clothing.

The birth of Demon Lord Girl Belzebu-tan – who had transcended both age and gender – had been prevented.

===Part 3===

The lord of demons remained in the shadows.

Kingsford and Rosencreutz’s clash began before he could slowly start to move. Something exploded. Kingsford fought evenly with Rosencreutz while sometimes sending her fingertips racing through empty air and sometimes using a single hand to grab and swing around a large tree or castle wall pouring down from above.

Kamijou could only watch.

“Hee hee! You’ll need more than that!!”

CRC took a few steps back to put some distance between them.

She had not managed a clean hit so far, but Kingsford did not look concerned as her opponent escaped beyond her range.

She wasn’t fixated on a quick resolution.

She had prioritized keeping Rosencreutz away from the lord of demons.

“As if that could control this old man.”

“I did ❌ 💭 that would be enough.”

“This old man won’t let you forget who created this hell.”

All of a sudden, a thick shadow bared its fangs and engulfed Kingsford from the head down. That was not the veil of kind shadow protecting Kamijou by obscuring his view.

That was Nyx.

More than just inanimate objects were rolling down from the higher levels of the mortar-shaped hell.

“Adonai Melekh Ne’eman.”

Anna Kingsford crossed herself.

That was all.

Some self-styled specialists might scoff and say that wasn’t even a spell. In Christian regions, people even prayed before meals, so crossing oneself was a mystical act known even to elementary school children.

But a true expert did not neglect the fundamentals.

By mastering them to the extreme, they could elevate every spell they knew to deadly levels.

The amorphous silhouette of reddish white and sludgy black was blown straight back up just before contacting her. Afterwards, it slithered away as if to avoid Kingsford. Almost like a slug that had finally realized it had leapt at a pile of purifying salt.

“Hell and the 👿 world seem like similar concepts, but they are ❌,” said the benevolent expert.

Kingsford had not lost her shine even in the depths of such darkness.

“Hell is not where the 👿s gather their strength while waiting for a chance to rebel. It is a righteous device created by god to eternally torment the sinners he has damned there. The 👑 of the 👿s resides in Judecca at the very bottom of hell, but there he only gnaws on the greatest sinners in the 🌍. …That makes him a part of god’s plan, so the glory of god can be found even in the very depths of hell.”

The color red twinkled overhead.

In countless places.

That fiery snow would burn away the body if it came in contact, but it oddly never seemed to reach Kingsford. She wasn’t actually doing anything. The fiery snow avoided the benevolent expert.

“Like I 💬d, hell is a part of god’s plan. Past the forest of suicide is the wasteland of scorching sand. That hell of 🔥y ❄️ is used to punish the sinners who violated the providence of god or the laws of nature. So if you have ❌ stained your ✋s with heretical acts, you need ❌ fear punishment.”

Kamijou’s ignorance prevented him from even thinking of heretical spells, so he too had made it through unharmed.

Which meant…

“CRC.”

“Kh.”

The tides were changing.

Past the fiery snow was Rosencreutz who had supposedly set this in motion.

(Can he not control it?)

Kamijou groaned.

A benevolent expert and a deadly expert.

It was like a massive device. Had they begun fighting over control of hell below the surface?

“This is ❌ the real hell. It is undoubtedly a phase you forcibly inserted. But even if you are its creator, you still need to be careful. Haven’t you already had a bad experience with your own creation turning against you?”

“You would mock this old man!? You, the false expert whose blind belief has led to nothing but stagnation!!?” roared the silver-haired young man in red.

Something responded.

Kingsford was not fazed. When the minotaur swung its massive axe in from the side, she stopped it with two fingers, swung it around herself, and tossed the minotaur away such that the three-headed cerberus was taken out as well.

She had an overwhelming advantage.

But the situation was still in motion.

The thick ice below their feet cracked.

“Kh!!”

Kamijou tried to stay in place, but after noticing something, Rosencreutz held his palm out this way.

A few explosions followed.

If the orbs of light were flying toward him, Kamijou could have negated them with his right hand, but that wasn’t enough for this.

This attack struck the thick ice.

Had Rosencreutz not meant to hit Kamijou?

Then what? Was sending a stray shot down into the thick ice of the frozen lake supposed to accomplish something?

(Oh, no.)

“Kh!!”

Kamijou braced his legs the best he could.

The ice below him slanted.

He couldn’t afford to stop running, so he kept jumping from foothold to foothold as giant fissures ran through the ice. Unlike Kingsford, who he had a feeling could fly through the sky if she wanted, he had to keep his feet on the ground, meaning this was a matter of life or death.

More and more of the thick ice shattered, some pieces sinking down and others jutting up.

If he carelessly contacted any of that, his leg could get caught and broken.

He was afraid that one of the fissures would end up too wide, but a cliff like height difference would be just as bad. Choosing the wrong place to stand would leave him stranded with nowhere to move and then Rosencreutz could concentrate his fire on him.

This was Judecca, the very bottom of hell.

That frozen lake wasn’t just ordinary ice. It was a negative holy ground created to eternally torment the three greatest sinners in the world.

This footing was only temporary.

Kamijou couldn’t imagine what would happen to him if he fell from the edge of this thick ice. He could guess it would be worse than being chewed by the great maw formed by two giant pieces of ice.

Not knowing was a form of fear.

He would have been less concerned fighting over a pool of lava.

And…

(Damn, where’d Kingsford go? We got separated in the darkness!!)

He was panicking, but the situation wasn’t going to wait for him to catch up.

The enemy was directly in front of him.

He was afraid that even moving his gaze around his surroundings would give CRC extra information.

And in that instant of hesitation…

“!!”

Something grazed the side of his head as it flew past.

He felt scorching heat from it.

He had to change his focus. If Kingsford wasn’t here, he had to do this on his own.

He was willing to give up an ear.

He probably wouldn’t die in hell even if his heart was gouged out or his head was blown off. This territory was thoroughly unkind to humans, so it wouldn’t provide an easy way out like the comfort of death.

So Kamijou had only one thing to focus on.

If his body was smashed to a pulp, the wrong person would climb the spiral stairs back to the realm of the living. He would only be able to watch as it happened. Come to think of it, what had happened to CRC’s body after Alice killed him? Or would Rosencreutz’s soul enter Kamijou Touma’s body to be revived? Either way, the threat of Christian Rosencreutz would appear within Academy City once more. Academy City had yet to recover after the first time, so it probably couldn’t stop a second attack.

Index was there.

So was Misaka Mikoto, Aogami Pierce, Komoe-sensei, Aradia, Aleister, and Accelerator.

How could he let that happen?

No one else needed to die and experience this.

So even if it meant the destruction of his body or soul, he would stop Rosencreutz here.

No matter what.

If Kamijou Touma climbed the spiral staircase even one step ahead of him, CRC’s resurrection could be stopped!!

“Hee hee. It would seem this old man cannot end this so easily with direct attacks, boy.”

“Kh.”

“But what about less direct methods? That right hand lacks the power to destroy illusions without touching them first!!”

CRC directed his palm overhead.

That hand held an eternal lamp that’s light would never be extinguished.

The bright light shined into the emptiness. However, no fiery rain poured down like a cloudburst and no massive explosion consumed all the oxygen in the vicinity.

This was much worse.

Did you forget?

Kamijou had only managed to maintain his sanity here in the depths of hell because of the thick veil of darkness so kindly protecting him. The lord of demons, the lord of hell, Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer. He went by many names, but Kamijou had been spared from seeing that being without a known identity or settled name.

What if a powerless signal flare had just been launched here? But was that really so harmless? Even if it was nothing more than a bright and gentle light, what would happen when the thick shadows at the bottom of hell were thoughtlessly swept away, revealing that which was hidden behind them!?

“Take this, uncultured boy!! You need not even touch it. Simply observing or speaking of this blot upon the world is considered a sin. Knowing his wicked nature is enough to corrode your very being!!!”

===Part 4===

The darkness was pulled back.

Everything was exposed to the light.

The lord of demons, the lord of hell, Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer. He had many important-sounding names, but what was he really? Not knowing the answer had to be the better choice in this case, but the answer was presented to Kamijou against his will.

“!!?”

He seriously considered crushing his own eyes before anything could happen.

But he didn’t have the time or the resolve. His sensibilities from his time alive got in the way.

The wicked light swept aside the kind darkness before he could do anything.

Yes.

''There was nothing there?

“Wha-?”

The expression of shock actually came from Rosencreutz.

A rumbling sound followed.

The tremor thundered out and the thick ice shattered in a chain reaction.

But it wasn’t that CRC had miscalculated. Something clearly unnatural lay before them. There was a gap in the center of the frozen lake. Located past the source of the mystery impact. It was located unnaturally far away from the center of the giant piece of ice.

There was no point in discussing who had done it.

There were only so many experts who could handle a direct battle with the true lord of hell who could shatter souls just by being seen.

She had done it empty handed.

Her arms were spread wide.

And she hadn’t hesitated.

“Anna Kingsford!? Did you directly challenge him without a second thought? He is the very core of hell, a part of the almighty god’s plan!!”

Now that the ultimate attack had ended in a dud, nothing remained to stop Kamijou.

He once more stepped toward CRC.

Powerfully.

Rosencreutz immediately slashed his fingers through the air.

Kamijou was faster.

His right fist shattered the magic and the tip of the silver-haired young man in red’s fingernail split. Producing a single drop of blood

It was 1-on-1.

Kamijou refused to rely on the reckless Dragon Strike which required cutting off his own arm, but he had still hung on this far. The young man’s face twisted at that fact and Kamijou Touma whispered to him.

“I might not have been able to win if you were Christian Rosencreutz.”

“Boy, what are you-”

“But right now, you aren’t the CRC who attacked Academy City.”

Yes.

That was it.

Something had felt off. He had thought hell was such hopeless place that there was no entertainment here, but it had still been odd.

CRC was somehow different from when he had fought in Academy City.

“You showed an interest in everything and made all sorts of detours. You cried at the drop of a hat and displayed empathy which led you to readily destroy an entire country or the whole world.”

“Kh.”

“That was the unmanageable disaster named Christian Rosencreutz!! But I’ve been watching you throughout our journey in hell. You never complained to our guide Kingsford and you just followed the standard path. You can’t afford to play around now that you’re in hell, can you? Rosencreutz was selfish and capricious, which made him hard to predict, but that identity’s been stripped away, leaving only Johann Valentin Andreae!!”

The hints had been found all throughout hell.

None of it had been a waste. You could not lie to yourself.

The path here had shown Kamijou the answer.

“You might have the same cards in your deck, but now the more responsible Johann Valentin Andreae is in charge. You’re easy to predict. I know all your cards and you have a terrible poker face, so you have no chance of winning!!”

Kamijou wouldn’t let him escape.

Kamijou wouldn’t allow another tragedy.

Kamijou wouldn’t let anyone else cry.

This one attack would save him and the world.

He had a tightly-clenched fist.

He was already in range.

Whatever CRC thought of that fact, he let out a roar.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

No, that was not Christian Rosencreutz.

It was Johann Valentin Andreae.

That dangerous expert had to know that his odds of defeating Kamijou would be higher if he stuck to playing the selfish, capricious, and unpredictable CRC.

But in that final moment, he was not Rosencreutz.

Johann came to the forefront.

As Kamijou Touma exposed his entire being and moved in for the attack, the man who had once been a 15-year-old boy may have wanted to also attack as himself.

Even if his coldly calculating side knew that would reduce his odds.

One of them spoke.

“I want to go back…”

“Yes,” agreed the other. “I want to go back.”

And they shouted as one as they reached each other.

“I want to go back!!!” “I want to go back!!!”

A dull impact exploded out.

Kamijou Touma’s right fist caught the young man’s cheekbone and pushed in.

<noinclude>
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</noinclude>

The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume4 Chapter1

2025-02-20T04:55:06Z

Churronzon: typo

==Stage 01: The Cutest Escape Game in the World?==
''“Do you know why my color is white?”

''“Because that way I can be dyed in your colors, brother! Kyah☆”

'''(“Now” Stage 01 Open 06/03 09:00)

'''(“Past” Stage 01 Open 05/31 09:30)

'''The Cutest Escape Game in the World?

===Part 1===

'''(Timeline “Now”)

After repeating the waking up and passing out process a few more times, Shiroyama Kyousuke finally seemed to realize something.

He could not win.

There was simply no way he could defeat the White Queen who was currently humming in the kitchen space while shaking her small butt back and forth.

“Hm, hmm, hm, hm, hm, hm, hmmm☆ Oh, to think the day would come when I could serve breakfast for my brother! This reminds me of our time in that miniature garden. Hee hee hee.”

(C-calm down. Calm down, me!! If I look at this in the right way, it’s the greatest opportunity I’ve ever had. I need to view this as the perfect chance to pull off some trial & error against the Queen who could kill me instantly anywhere and at any time!! Remember, you won’t receive a miracle like this again. Use this as a chance to thoroughly work out her characteristics, traits, weaknesses, and flaws!!!!!!)

There were times when people had to force their thoughts in a positive direction to stay sane.

With his back pressed against the wall, his butt on the floor, and a throbbing weight in his head, Kyousuke changed his train of thought.

D.R.O.K, the Summoning Ceremony international trade show, the Deltaston family, Pandemonium, 353 vessels, and an attempt to save them…

He could remember a few things, but pieces were missing.

Were his lost memories due to the White Queen tormenting him over and over, or was there some other cause? Kyousuke could not tell given how beat up he was this early in the morning.

He decided to ask the first question that came to mind.

“Where is my vessel, Himekawa Mika…?”

“Oh, come on now.”

He heard a dull sound.

As the White Queen looked back in grinning newlywed mode, she had crushed the handle of the frying pan she held.

“Is that any way to greet me first thing in the morning, brother? Why ''the hell'' would you ruin the mood by mentioning another girl’s name in front of me on this nice sunny day?”

She had no choice but to directly hold the edge of the frying pan as she shook it above the gas burner, but her smile did not falter in the slightest. A sizzling sound came from her hand, but she did not seem to be in any pain.

Sweat poured from Kyousuke’s body, but he still tried to think.

(What in the world happened after that? It does seem to be connected to Himekawa Mika…but does that mean she might be ''inside'' the White Queen as a vessel?)

The situation was far too irregular from the moment the White Queen had been indefinitely summoned without relying on a Blood-Sign or Incense Grenade. He did not have enough information to work with, but Himekawa Mika supporting the White Queen as a vessel would be the worst case.

That would mean the Queen had stolen his vessel.

Without a vessel, he could not summon Materials and he was not aware of a way to cancel a contract with a vessel who was currently possessed by a Material.

It was a lot like locking the keys in the car.

He needed a vessel to fight the White Queen, but he needed to do something about the White Queen to take his vessel back.

He could not fight at the moment.

In a way, this may have been an extraordinary chance to continue fighting against the powerful White Queen with no time limit, but he was not one to rejoice at that.

“Okay, brother! Breakfast is ready!! You were still living a life of cereal and milk in the mornings, weren’t you? But I used all my skill to make you a special wife’s meal that’s good for the body and soul!! Eat up☆”

As the White Queen lined up dish after dish on the table, there was no apparent malice in her.

Although that was what made her so very frightening.

“…”

Kyousuke cautiously observed her behavior, but the food itself had done nothing wrong. And if he upset her now, he could easily be turned into a red juice to go along with it. He sat at the table despite the heavy weight in his stomach.

And as he observed the meal, one thought came to mind.

“It’s all white.”

“That’s my identity.”

“But it’s too white! What is this lineup!? Potato salad, white stew, stir-fried cauliflower and white asparagus, and even hot milk to drink!? Any one of them would be fine, but it looks downright psychedelic all together like this!!”

“If you don’t know where to start, I recommend the chicken or the white-fleshed fish. Hee hee. And don’t overlook that I made sure to cut off the bread crust. We don’t need anything that isn’t white!!”

“That’s blasphemy! The crust is the best part when it’s all toasted and crunchy!”

“Why would I make it golden brown? Now, brother, eat it untoasted. I recommend putting either margarine or white chocolate paste on it.”

The White Queen gave him a beaming smile from across the table.

[[Image:BloodSign_v04_049.jpg|thumb]]

The look on her face said she would tear open his belly and shove it directly into his stomach if he refused.

After a heavy sigh, he grabbed the chopsticks.

He started with a cautious bite of the stir-fried vegetables.

“Oh, it’s good.”

“Hee hee.”

“The food itself is actually pretty good. It’s well made.”

“Hee hee hee hee hee!! Of course it is. I have to be able to cook if I’m going to be a good wife for you, brother. Do you know why my color is white? Because that way I can be dyed in your colors, brother! Kyah☆”

He gave his honest opinion because being disagreeable would get him nowhere, but the White Queen placed her hands on her cheeks and started shaking back and forth.

And since Kyousuke could tell it was good while under so much stress he felt like he had a bowling ball in his stomach, it would likely be recognized as good by anyone.

After that, the White Queen joined him in eating the food on the table. It was a mystery whether that peak of the Unexplored-class needed to ingest nutrients or if she could even starve if she was deprived of food, but she seemed happy at least making a show of eating the food.

“Queen.”

“What is it?”

“I won’t ask why you’re here. That would be too direct and would only make me feel empty inside. So tell me this: does your presence here have something to do with Pandemonium?”

“Oh, dear. Does that mean you ''reallllly'' don’t remember a thing?”

“…”

“Hee hee. Then I think I will keep my silence. After all, if you were to remember that dream-like time, this might all fall apart.”

Her teasing way of speaking made him nearly break the chopsticks he held, but that would have been meaningless. He could never hope to match the White Queen in violence, so any show of force would only make her smile like a mother praising her child.

But a human’s weapon was not their strength. He refocused his thoughts and worked to keep his cool.

“Let’s review the situation, Queen.”

“I am open to any topic that means I can converse with you, brother.”

“The Summoning Ceremony trade show named D.R.O.K. is officially a joint project run by Government, Illegal, and Freedom. It lies one step away from reconciliation and is a necessary step toward a historical turning point that will end this age of fruitless conflict.” Kyousuke spoke as if he were blankly keeping the gears in his mind turning. “But it’s actually run by the Deltaston family. They are a member of the Round Table just like the Magentarain family and they have formed a gigantic border-crossing faction by sending skilled summoners to each of the three major powers.”

“In other words, the joint project is the Deltaston family’s way of expanding their power. Particularly Pandemonium. That would normally devolve into the three major powers bickering over who gets to use it and it would never function properly. But with influential members of the same family making adjustments in each of those major powers, it can function just fine. It has effectively become a toy for the exclusive use of that family.”

“D.R.O.K. …The divine right of kings. The name sure fits. They’ve built up an absolute power that none of the three major powers can interfere with while also letting those major powers argue themselves into a standstill over who gets to use Pandemonium. While they’re all too busy keeping each other from doing anything, the Deltaston family can stop hiding their giant faction and establish their unrestricted position in the Summoning Ceremony world. Pandemonium functions as both the gas and the brakes.”

That giant trade show was officially funded jointly by the three major powers, but it was effectively only put together by the members of the Deltaston family who had infiltrated those major powers. In a way, this was their kingdom. The king at the top would be occupying an entire luxury resort hotel while defended by elites from all three major powers.

“This might be off topic a bit, but why would the Deltaston family purposefully build their base outside of Pandemonium?” asked the Queen.

“It’s obvious why they would use a resort hotel. They aren’t the type of people who find comfort in a bunch of crude weapons.”

“Is that something like how a supercomputer is convenient, but no one wants to be anywhere near the actual computer kept at a several dozen degrees below zero and surrounded by powerful electromagnetic waves?”

“They probably prefer to keep their distance while still being able to send in a request for the power of a Divine- or Unexplored-class. I mean, that thing’s a giant mobile fortress that uses Unexplored-classes at its leisure. I bet the inside is full of tricks to distort one’s spiritual cognizance. An experienced summoner or vessel might be fine, but the Deltaston family stays below Award 100 to fit into normal society, so their autonomic nerves would be fried if they stayed there for too long.”

He spoke like he had seen the place before.

And the White Queen giggled before saying more.

“If Pandemonium was developed from its current trial phase and used in earnest, it would bring us to a new age, wouldn’t it? I have no interest whatsoever in what benefits humans, but did no one try to destroy this before that happens?”

“Since it’s still up and running, I guess not. The words that lead mankind to ruin are always the same: surely they wouldn’t go that far.”

Based on the conversation, Kyousuke saw no discrepancy between his understanding and the White Queen’s. As a baseline, this told him the information he had was not erroneous.

That left only one problem: the gap in his memories.

The truth had to be concentrated there.

(Even if the giant Box that is Pandemonium is being used to indefinitely summon the Queen, that won’t stop the conflict between the three major powers. That would drive an eternal wedge into the gears. But did the Deltaston family not realize that no human can control her after summoning her!?)

“Brother, can I turn on the TV? I’ve always been interested in those blood type fortunetelling sections. I hear they always do them during the morning news!”

“What blood type are you anyway? Type X with an Rh of ∞?”

The White Queen was breathing excitedly, so Kyousuke let her have the remote, stacked up the empty dishes, and carried them over the kitchen space’s sink. He generally relied on home appliances, but since he lived in a cruiser, he was used to washing dishes by hand to preserve water.

“…”

He briefly glanced over at the knife sitting on the drain board, but that was too simplistic. He doubted anything would change even if he stabbed the White Queen in the back as she faced away from him while engrossed in the flat screen TV. She might even smile as she grabbed him, call him a good boy while patting him on the head, and make him curl up in her lap.

“Brother, brother! They said guys with Type A and girls with Type AB are a perfect match!”

“Didn’t I just say your blood type would probably come back as ‘error’?”

“Yes. It’s most unfortunate, but it would seem I need to go on a worldwide tour to exterminate every last woman with Type AB bloo-…hgyuh!”

“Queen, you have some white stew on your cheek.”

“Funyuhhhh…”

Leaving her alone would have led to disaster, so he found an arbitrary reason to toy with her soft cheek through a handkerchief. The twintail girl looked about ready to pass out.

As she let him toy with her like a small child, the White Queen asked a question.

“Wh-what are your plans for the day, brother?”

“Good question.” Kyousuke sighed. “Sitting around in my room isn’t going to change anything, so I think I’ll wander around outside.”

“My, my!! So after eating my home cooking, we’re going to have a walking date together? Today really is my lucky day! I feel like making it a global holiday!!”

As he watched the White Queen celebrate, Kyousuke added more in his heart.

(And I also need to recover my lost memories and find a way to kill you.)

The goal had been right before his eyes from the very beginning.

The problem was finding a way to open the door known as the White Queen.

He had to rack his brains and use everything available to him.

A girl who had spoken the cursed words might be waiting behind that locked door.

===Part 2===

'''(Timeline “Now”)

Trade shows had two primary goals: business and advertisement. The former meant signing contracts for new products and the latter meant showing off your technology to the press. The business side was sometimes based in a desire for the product and was sometimes based on a desire to build up connections. The advertisement side was sometimes used to increase your brand name and increase your ability to sell and compete and was sometimes used to show off your superiority to the competition and drive them into despair.

The people there for the advertisements were focused on the announcements made at special booths at set times. So this early in the morning, most of the people filling the streets were summoners and vessels looking to buy Blood-Signs, Incense Grenades, restraints, Repliglass, or the components and chemicals used to make them.

However…

“……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

“C’mon, brother. Why do you look so gloomy that someone would think you’re watching the end of the world? You need to look a little happier walking around with such a cute girl holding onto your arm. Happy☆”

Rather than watching the end of the world, Shiroyama Kyousuke felt like he was standing in the center of the world.

That was hardly surprising when ''the'' White Queen stood by his side, wrapped her arms around his right arm, leaned her full weight against him, and even rested her head on his shoulder.

The gazes of the passersby were too painful.

In fact…

“Her Majesty? Ehhh!? Her Majesty!!!???”

“Don’t be stupid. That’s got to be cosplay. They have that musical based on the White Queen, remem-…ugyaahhh!! I-i-it’s actually her!?”

“Bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble…”

It went far beyond double takes and wondering whether or not to snap a photo. A large man collapsed on the spot and wept like a small child, a holy woman must have been so shocked she entered nirvana because her eyes rolled back in her head and she foamed at the mouth, a group of what looked like indigenous South Americans prostrated themselves before her with their foreheads pressed against the ground, and a gaudy female fortuneteller began gathering up the dirt the Queen had stepped on and stuffing it into a bag like a high school baseball player at Koshien. Kyousuke was not sure what to make of it. Humans were said to be the lords of creation, but the second they saw a paranormal being, they were willing to throw out all of their dignity.

Shiroyama Kyousuke’s lips grew pale as he spoke his honest thoughts.

“Why couldn’t you have considered staying back in my room? If you’re going to stand out this much, it would help if I was alone. At this rate, they’re going to make a statue of me as well.”

“Oh, come now. Only a real man gets to show off his lovely girlfriend like this, brother. Now, hold your head high. You need to let the world know you managed to make me yours.”

The White Queen was in full lovey-dovey mode, but Kyousuke could not laugh off this topic since he had earned the award Loved by the White in the past and since he had been targeted by the group of (perverted) summoners known as Guard of Honor.

But the White Queen did not seem at all bothered by the commotion surrounding them.

“Oh, dear. There are so many stands set up. Hmm. The love-filled wife’s meal was absolutely crucial, but it would be a shame to pass this up. So, brother! Let us use the logic of having a separate stomach for snacks so you can treat me to some ice cream!!”

“No, that sounds like a pain in the ass. If you want ice cream, ask one of your worshipers for some and they’ll make so much for you they’ll use up all the ice in the Antarctic.”

“You just don’t understand how the world works, brother. It only makes your heart flutter when your beloved buys it for you. Ice cream, ice cream! And it has to be vanilla of course!”

“…Why are you so obsessed with the color white? Ugh.”

“Because I’m the White Queen who loves all things white!! Hee hee. What were you imagining, brother?”

Since she asked, Kyousuke answered honestly.

And he did so with a blank look on his face.

“Well, I’d thought you were insane but that you still had a line you wouldn’t cross. I thought you had an ignorant and pure heart, so this is a bit of a surprise. Yeah, you might be my nemesis, but it’s still a shock.”

“Fweh!?”

“Lu-san will say a lot of those things, but I’d bet anything she’s pure. And do I even have to say anything about a shut-in like Aika? Hmm, but I guess you’re the exception…”

“Wh-wh-wh-wh-wh-what are you saying!? Don’t tell me you’re having a sudden onset of maiden delusion now! But make no mistake! It may be true that my worshipers around the world will sometimes hold hard-to-watch rituals in front of my statues and idols in underground temples or aerial cities! But!! I myself am pure!! I simply happen to overhear a lot of inappropriate things! So make no mistake about my purity!!!!!”

She was so panicked that she did not even notice Kyousuke mentioning a few other girls.

Kyousuke used that opening to guide them away from the ice cream stand, but the White Queen noticed.

“Ah, what about my trophy of having a gentleman gallantly buy me a treat!?”

“Stop it. If I take you there now, they’ll dig the wrapper out of the trash and hang it up in a sanctuary somewhere. They’ll probably call it a holy relic or something.”

“Fwehhh, brother!”

“I said no. Besides, if I give in just once, the demands will never stop. I only have so much money in my walle-…”

He was cut off by a metallic clinking sound.

The confused boy watched as a shower of coins was thrown toward them from all directions. In the blink of an eye, the ground at their feet looked like a pond at a tourist destination.

“Please use this! This old man is more than willing to offer some money if it is for Her Majesty!!”

“In fact this feels like too little for the honor of gazing upon her face like this! Kh, curse you, Alice (with) Rabbit. Are you going to demand I make up the difference with my body!?”

“Gozaru, gozaru!! Holder of Loved by the White, you must not make the Queen cry!!”

Kyousuke had triggered quite a commotion, so he quickly shouted back at the people.

“I am not accepting any indirect offerings! The entire world is far too kind to this insane twintails!!”

At that moment, he sensed a sharp gaze from the crowd.

He looked over and spotted two familiar faces.

They were twin shrine maidens.

“(R-Renge. What is that!? I can’t figure out how this could have happened!)”

“(Shh! We’re leaving, Higan! Don’t look that freak in the eye!)”

“(Wow. Um, Shiroyama-san really has changed a lot.)”

“(I can’t believe he’s smugly showing off that dangerous thing. Kh, he should have asked us for help before he was this badly broken!)”

Kyousuke felt the hair across his body bristle.

“Wait! Please waaaaaaaaaaaait!! How long have you been here!? Where did you come from!? And do you happen to know anything about my missing memories!?”

“C’mon, don’t be like that, brother. …I mean it. Speak some other girls’ names and we’ll have two new craters on the moon. Got that?”

The White Queen smiled cheerfully and made a point of clinging to Kyousuke’s arm, resting her head on his shoulder, and holding him in place like a ship’s anchor. Meanwhile, the twin sisters vanished into the crowd.

It was a sorrowful parting.

“Ah, ahhh, ahhhhhhh.”

“Okay, brother. What shall we do now?”

He was finally freed, but it was too late.

At this rate, the crowd was going to grow even more excited than a national idol discovered in the middle of a scramble crossing, so Kyousuke grabbed the White Queen’s hand and quickly left. He glanced around on the way, but he saw no sign of any shrine maiden outfits.

Meanwhile, he looked like he was stealing a bride away from the chapel (mostly due to her pure white dress), so…

“Oh, my☆ How bold, brother. I just won another trophy in life.”

“You shut your mouth!! If we had stayed there, they probably would have built a giant monument and the spot would have been marked on world maps as ‘the holy land where offerings were given to our queen in heaven’!! The place could easily end up covered in blood and guts!!”

Of course, if that peak of the Unexplored-class had not wanted to move, she would not have budged even if a passenger jet rammed into her, so the Queen had to be entirely on board with being pulled away by him.

“Ah, what does he think he’s doing!? Is he trying to keep our Queen to himself!? And when simply being able to borrow the power of her name is too great an honor!”

“Gozaru, gozaru!”

“Hm, it would seem I have no choice. I will help out as the Love and Hate Aggressor. Guide rabbit, only you can put such a lovely smile on Her Majesty’s face! Take her with you and get out of here!!”

As small commotions (or at least he prayed they were small) started up here and there, they ultimately found themselves at a viewing platform. But this northern land was a large plain, so it was quite flat. Instead of adding a railing and maintaining the top of a natural hill, it looked more like a large metal lookout tower with the floor space of a cooking classroom or home ec classroom.

It was deserted, but that may have been because everyone here was a summoner or vessel for advertisement or business purposes. There were very few people who had arrived purely as sightseers.

Kyousuke finally breathed a sigh of relief in the four story viewing platform.

“This is awful…! Normal people who didn’t know anything would actually be better because they might walk right past you without realizing your value!!”

“Oh? But in that case, their ignorance would lead to a spiritual awakening. And since they do not know who I am, they might start up some misguided cult.”

There was more to her than simple violence or combat ability.

Before any of that, one had to contend with her presence, her aura, and her charisma. In what looked like some kind of joke, even veteran summoners and vessels who used the gods of legend as a stepping stool would ''voluntarily'' bow down to this higher life form. Just by standing there, she could produce worship. Just by smiling, she could fully distort everything that civilization had built up. She was a singularity like a black hole that endlessly sucked in human hearts.

Could you fight that?

Could you even maintain the will to fight her?

A battle with the White Queen began there. And only a very few had honed the blade of their humanity to that point. And if they let their guard down for even a moment, that blade would be instantly worn down and dulled by an invisible power.

Just like his former enemies: Uniquely Selfless Azalea Magentarain, Telomere’s End Benikomichi Fuuki, Liar Cat Biondetta Shiroyama, etc.

“Brother.”

But the White Queen with her silver twintails and pure white dress merely smiled sweetly and pressed her hands together in front of her chest.

“I do not care what form it takes as long as I can play with you. We could even do exactly as you wish and begin an endless death match where you try again and again to kill me with every method you can think of.”

“…”

“But remember that I said I do not care what form it takes. Yes, anything is fine as long as I am satisfied. So wouldn’t you be protecting the world by playing with me in a way that avoids needless conflict? For example, if there is no direct battle, there is no chance of the puny summoners and vessels here being killed, so wouldn’t you be ''saving'' them by choosing to go on a date and flirt with me?”

Kyousuke audibly gulped.

This was it. Those words were like a cool glass of water after walking endlessly through the scorching desert. By swapping out the essence of the matter, she could make compromising and giving in sound like the good option. This “first attack” tried to break people’s beliefs just by smiling and throwing sweet words their way. If the psychological could be seen, then Kyousuke would be on the verge of being swallowed by the great maw of a carnivorous dinosaur.

“Let’s go to a tropical island.”

The White Queen leaned up against him and buried her face in his chest while whispering to him.

“If you wish to expel me from the world, there is no need to fight me, brother. All you need to do is seal me away inside a secret garden. As long as I am happy there, I will never leave. I will not even be curious what would happen if I were to leave. I will do anything for you, brother. Do you like one piece swimsuits? Or are two-piece ones or bikinis more your style? Compared to swinging your Blood-Sign around in a fruitless and endless battle, this is bound to be the more constructive choice for the world.”

“…”

“I will be satisfied as long as I have you, brother.”

If that was all, then she would be telling the truth.

She looked up at him while snuggled up against him from the front.

Her damp eyes glittered and her enchanting lips formed her words.

She looked just like a girl begging for a kiss from her lover.

“I will ask nothing of the world, I will take nothing from the world, and I will threaten nothing in the world. So won’t you please place your arms around my waist?”

Shiroyama Kyousuke imagined that possibility for just a moment.

He could not help himself.

And then he shook his head.

“…That would cause a war.”

“It would not. I am talking about a complete and utter disappearance. It is the desire to monopolize me that triggers conflict, so this would actually remove the possibility of harm from the world.”

“No.”

He mustered all of his strength to turn his back on that easy but fatally sweet poison.

“I am saying it would trigger the final war between the two of us. In that secret garden of yours.”

“Oh, you’re so mean, brother!!”

A complete change came over her.

She puffed her cheeks out like a child.

“…But that is exactly what makes you so worth winning over.”

As the White Queen embraced him from the front and rubbed her face against his chest, the boy leaned against the railing and shook his head to take his eyes off of her.

From that four story height, he could see the donut-shaped trade show and Pandemonium in the center. That colossal Repliglass structure had a giant squid silhouette due to the giant coffin shape with a large number of tentacle-like pipelines attached to the bottom. But he saw a few oddities in that scenery.

There was an empty field within the donut.

And in that field were several craters ranging between several hundred meters and several kilometers across. The patch of green had been cruelly torn up and a water vein must have been hit because they were filled with water like lakes.

And as he viewed that scene, he felt something like a jolt of electricity in the back of his mind.

“…?”

Instead of rejecting the pain, he abandoned himself to it.

He slowly peeled the scab from his memories.

And the first vision that appeared in his mind was of two people he had seen just a moment ago…

===Part 3===

'''(Timeline “Past”)

“Do you know who Ellie Slide is?”

Somewhere and at some point, the black-haired shrine maiden named Meinokawa Renge had asked him that.

“She’s apparently a well-known incense expert, but we don’t know where to find her in this crowd.”

“Oh? You have some interesting connections.”

Kyousuke sounded impressed, but Renge sighed frankly.

“It’s not that. We want to hire her to manufacture an Incense Grenade. I had been making them on instinct so far, but someone pointed out there’s a lot of waste in the mixture. But I can’t pinpoint my own idiosyncrasies, so I want to have an expert make a basic one for me that I can use for reference.”

“Hmm. By the way, your sister seems to be napping on her feet. Was it an exhausting trip?”

“Higan! Don’t try to escape reality just because it’s a complicated subject!! C’mon, you’re drooling!!”

The black and blonde haired shrine maidens continued arguing as they disappeared into the crowd. They would have stood out in a normal city, but they blended in quite well in a trade show overrun with summoners and vessels.

Kyousuke shrugged as he watched them go, but then he realized the promised time had arrived.

He was here to meet someone.

She was a strange person.

This was May 31, just a few days ago. That was Shiroyama Kyousuke’s first impression of the woman named Himekawa Mika. Her waist-length bluish-black ponytail was contained in a fluffy scrunchie, she had sharp and intelligent facial features, her bodylines had plenty of curves, and she wore a deep navy blue suit with the tight skirt and a portion of the stockings intentionally torn. That last point was the only odd thing about her. Altogether, she was quite beautiful, but there was something else that led the boy to his absurd impression.

''Oh.

''She looks almost exactly like that woman.

It was 10:30 AM in the crowds of D.R.O.K. And he seriously wondered what to do about her when she blew the silver whistle hanging from her neck the second their eyes met.

“You are Shiroyama Kyousuke-san, right? You’re late. Very late! I believe we agreed to meet at ten on the dot!!”

“Sorry, I’m running a little slow.”

“What kind of excuse is that!? Be more careful…and learn your lesson!!”

Kyousuke held out his hands to urge her to cool down, but Himekawa Mika’s face only grew redder as she blew her whistle. As she did, he heard a jangling from the mug and 12-sided die decorations connected by a thin chain.

In truth, Kyousuke had arrived half an hour before the arranged time and scouted out the surrounding area. He had then waited until half an hour after the arranged time to observe the actions and reactions of the woman. His conversation with the Meinokawa sisters had only been one part of that and he had moved to a position where Himekawa would spot him only after he decided it was safe to let her notice him in the crowd.

The ponytail beauty must have finally felt satisfied because she removed the whistle from her mouth.

“Um, Shiroyama Kyousuke…-kun? What do you know about my situation?”

“Only what was in the job email. You are Himekawa Mika, an Illegal vessel who is currently free. Lu-san introduced us and I was told to ask for any more details once I arrived.”

“That’s the expected format. Let’s find somewhere to sit down and discuss this.”

They were at a trade show for new Summoning Ceremony technology (i.e. weapons), but there were also plenty of lodging facilities and restaurants. Himekawa Mika chose a nearby tent-style restaurant. The long tables arranged in a line had long legs and no chairs. With junk food like frankfurters, fries, and yakisoba on the menu, Kyousuke was cautious, but the tight skirt beauty actually ordered a mug of beer this early.

“It’s ten in the morning.”

“It’s ten thirty. And psychological trances are a necessary part of being a vessel.”

“You’re from Illegal all right. You really know how to excuse your own self-indulgence…”

Then he remembered one of the decorations on the sin necklace she used to mentally bind herself: a mug.

But Kyousuke also saw something nostalgic in her appearance.

“Hm? Why are you staring at me?”

“It’s nothing really.” Kyousuke looked like he had trouble believing it himself. “It’s just that you look a lot like someone. Your general atmosphere, your taste in clothes, and even the whistle. You remind me a lot of ''one of the people who looked after me'' back in the Queen’s Miniature Garden. …You’re the spitting image of Madam Professor.”

“Please stop hitting on me before we get to work.”

“Even that reaction is just like her, unfortunately. And is that anything to say while drinking a beer? Although that too is just like her, so I’m not sure what to do about it.”

Kyousuke leaned his upper body against the tall table while giving in to the odd sense of déjà vu, but Himekawa Mika placed her shapely butt on the table to sit down with mug in hand. And this beautiful woman had intentionally torn the sides of her tight skirt and her stockings, so when the vessel crossed her long legs, her oddly alluring skin was placed right in front of his eyes.

This only annoyed Kyousuke, but…

“This is a local sign. It warns people away because I’ll only bring them trouble.”

“Illegal really does like ''that kind of thing'', don’t they? And no one seems to know where they come from like a prison communication method using the sound of banging on the bars.”

D.R.O.K. had not been running for long, but these local rules had apparently been created, refined, and spread in that short time. It made little sense to someone looking in from the outside.

But Himekawa did not seem to mind.

“What about you? What’s with that combination?”

“What? It’s just caramel popcorn and milk.”

“…It’s ten in the morning.”

“It’s ten thirty. A summoner needs sugar to keep up his high level thoughts.”

“I see you’ve refined your excuses to a high level too.”

“I would have preferred to get some carbs with plain cereal, but this combination was the closest substitute I could find.”

They seemed to have differing tastes.

While showing off her bright and soft skin through her torn stockings, Himekawa gulped down her alcohol and continued the conversation with a drunken energy.

She talked about the rush of new Summoning Ceremonies, Pandemonium, the joint project between the three major powers, and the Deltaston family of the Round Table that was involved in it all.

“So to sum up,” said Kyousuke as he stuck his spoon into the soup bowl of sweet milk. “How Pandemonium works doesn’t matter. The same goes for the Deltaston family’s conspiracy. All that matters are the 353 vessels imprisoned in that impregnable mobile fortress and that Pandemonium uses them as its gears. So is my job to rescue them?”

Himekawa winced somewhat at the ominous atmosphere that seemed charged with static electricity.

“You’re willing to write that family off as not mattering?”

“Well, they don’t matter compared to human lives, do they?”

Once he said that, Kyousuke’s expression was back to normal.

And he thought about what was to come.

If it came to a battle, it would be against other summoners.

Just glancing around the junk food restaurant, he spotted a few summoners and vessels he recognized.

One was Government Award 892, Love and Hate Aggressor.

She was generally a summoner whose motto was loyalty, but she focused less on actual battles and more on working hard to strictly train up newcomers. She had given Government a much greater fighting force and she was also known to appear on the front line and briefly produce hell on earth only when one of her beloved pupils was killed. But she was also well known to cross the boundaries between major powers to repay anyone who saved one of those beloved pupils.

One was Illegal Award 500, Cursed Doll.

She was a rare example of a summoner who had once been a vessel. Most of those with the traits of a spiritual medium could not act as a summoner because they were too strongly influenced by the Material during battle, but she was known for building that loss of control into her strategy and pulling off feats above her Award level with almost suicidal techniques. Once she lost control, no one could predict who she would bare her fangs against, so it was effectively impossible to work with her on a mission.

One was Freedom Award Unknown, Gozaru Summoner.

This bizarre summoner always wore a Gozaru Samurai costume. He was known for being quite skilled but extremely capricious. It was rumored that multiple people took turns wearing the costume. His Award level was unknown because adding up all of his past exploits within all three major powers provided a sum that exceeded 1000.

The situation might allow them to split their opponents between two camps so they would fight each other.

As Kyousuke thought, Himekawa waved a hand to call the waitress over.

Her mug was already empty.

“It’s ten thirty.”

“Then I won’t get another mug. I’ll take a glass of this platinum bubble. And make it snappy☆”

Kyousuke could only hold his head in his hands.

Meanwhile, Himekawa spoke to him from the table.

“The vessels are of course the center of Pandemonium, so it will cease to function if they are removed. The Deltaston family will never allow that. They have people in all three major powers, so we’ll find more and more people involved in this.”

“''That doesn’t matter,''” readily stated Shiroyama Kyousuke.

He was not simply refusing to think about it. If necessary, he would calmly take on all three major powers.

Himekawa gave into her intoxication, swayed back and forth on the table, and used the hand not holding her beer glass to reach behind her waist. She unhooked the side of her skirt, moved to the back of the tight skirt, grabbed the upper edge with her slender finger, and lowered it slightly.

A bit above her tailbone, a large object was embedded in her lightly flushed skin.

It was a blatantly mechanical keyhole with a metallic shine. Something was written in the alphabet along the round outer edge. The six letters starting with “F” provided the name of a goddess from Norse Mythology who was a goddess of beauty and fertility and who controlled half of heaven’s army.

“We are the Holy Key Women. Simply insert and turn the authorization key and we can summon a specific Divine-class. …I rejoiced when I first heard that explanation, but I never thought we would be built into Pandemonium.” She gave a self-deprecating smile. “But not only is our opponent borrowing the power of Pandemonium, but technology like this is within their reach. In fact, the Deltaston family has spread their roots to all three major powers, so they will have plenty of strange methods beyond the Illegal ones. That is what it means to challenge Pandemonium and fight its owner. Are you truly prepared to take on ''a world one step outside the Blood-Sign method''?”

“I already told you: That doesn’t matter.” Kyousuke did not smile. “You might be worried how we’ll fight whatever our enemy might use against us, but you can leave all of that to me. So Himekawa Mika, there’s only one thing I want from you. And I’m not talking about the reward or what cards you might have on hand. First of all, I want to confirm something. I want to hear it from your own mouth.”

“My mouth…?”

“I didn’t hear it in the email. I was told to discuss the details once I arrived. So I’ll ask again: What is it you want? Does the desire in your heart contain the words needed to drive me to action?”

When she heard that, the beautiful woman laughed quietly.

She removed her finger from her lowered tight skirt and hid the strange gadget. She drank down the rest of her beer glass’s contents, inhaled, and exhaled. She seemed to be savoring that normal action.

And then she spoke.

[[Image:BloodSign_v04_079.jpg|thumb]]

“I came here by forging my license. I can move freely for the time being, but they will notice before long and Illegal…no, the Deltaston family will send someone after me.”

“…?”

“Most of the Holy Key Women are being used as components for Pandemonium, but a few were let out for demonstrations at the booths and studios. I forged my selection for one of those. I might have been able to bring a few more with me. That might have been an option, but I abandoned the idea. Instead of only partially saving them, I temporarily abandoned them all so I could rescue every last one of them.”

That may have been why.

She had chosen to stick with Illegal’s way of doing things. She did not bother with niceties, she did not compromise and then glorify the tragic result, and she was prepared to stay true to her initial intent until the very, very end. Had she taken a turn toward the unkind in order to reach a result that surpassed good and evil?

“I can’t just escape on my own. I can’t let this end as a mere traitor. I used the internet to contact an intermediary I used to use and I used the thin thread of Lu Niang Lan to draw in you, Freedom Award 903, Alice (with) Rabbit. I threw out all morals in order to say this one thing.”

She looked Kyousuke straight in the eye.

And with the fragility of trying to support the weight of every last sinner with a single strand of spider web, Himekawa Mika spoke clearly.

Just like the Holy Key Women, she seemed to directly insert her words into a certain boy’s soul and then twist it around.

“''So I beg you. Please save us all from the impregnable Pandemonium.''”

===Part 4===

'''(Timeline “Now”)

On the viewing platform, Kyousuke slapped his cheek with one hand while the White Queen leaned up against him.

(Little by little, it’s coming back to me.)

Himekawa Mika was one of the Holy Key Women. She had contacted Kyousuke to rescue the 353 vessels remaining in the multi-tentacle mobile fortress Pandemonium, a colossal Repliglass structure. She was the current Alice. She was the unique vessel who could skip three stages in the Blood-Sign method to immediately summon a specific Divine-class into her body.

(In that case, was she a Holy Key Woman who can directly summon the White Queen? No, that doesn’t make sense. Her keyhole had the six-letter name of a Norse goddess starting with F. Since this isn’t fitting together, I must still be ''missing some memories''…)

“Oh? Is something the matter, brother?”

He observed the White Queen as she embraced him and looked up at him, but he saw no resemblance to Himekawa Mika. He could not sense that woman’s presence.

Was Himekawa Mika imprisoned within the Queen, or was there some other possibility?

“Something’s bothering me.”

“What might that be?”

“What happened with Pandemonium? No, what happened with the Holy Key Women? And not just the ones imprisoned inside that fortress. What happened to them all, including Himekawa Mika!?”

He was missing some memories and someone who should have been by his side was missing.

He felt a pressure in his chest that was not just from confronting the White Queen.

This may have been what it felt like to get hopelessly drunk and wake up in a pile of trash in an unfamiliar alleyway while holding a bloody wallet in your hand.

Meanwhile, the peak of the Unexplored-class with her silver twintails and pure white dress brought her slender index finger to her own lips.

She did not explain anything.

Only a thin smile appeared on her lips.

“…''Hee hee''☆”

Kyousuke could not wait any longer.

She would not budge if he shoved her away. He slipped out of her arms as she leaned against his chest and he immediately climbed over the viewing platform railing. The platform was four stories up. He jumped between the steel beams complexly crisscrossing as they supported the platform and slid down the diagonally positioned beams to control the speed of his descent.

As soon as he landed, the White Queen descended from heaven.

She weightlessly landed on the ground.

“Okay, brother. Where should we go next?”

“Shut up! I’m not relying on you anymore and I’ve found something I need to see for myself!! I don’t know what happened after that, but I need to see if I can still answer Himekawa Mika’s request. No, no matter what might have happened, I’ll find a way, even if it means altering the timeline or overcoming causality!!”

He needed information.

But was facing inwards and filling in his missing memories really the only way to get that?

In the few pieces he had recovered, he had seen references to the Deltaston family that had infiltrated all three major powers. And he could also directly attack Pandemonium to discover what had become of the vessels. One was a powerful enemy and the other an impregnable mobile fortress. So what? He was Freedom Award 903, Alice (with) Rabbit. He had no vessel and could not use the Summoning Ceremony. What did that matter? If he wanted to be known as the strongest, he had to accept some slight inconveniences. None of that was any reason to just sit idly by and watch.

After all, he had already heard it.

He had heard the cursed words that someone had risked everything to say.

He wanted to know what had happened to the vessels imprisoned within Pandemonium.

Not to mention Himekawa Mika. He definitely wanted to confirm the safety of that woman who looked so much like that Madam Professor who had looked after him back in the Queen’s Miniature Garden.

“Brother, your adorable emotions don’t matter here. Do you have an actual plan?”

“Kh. The Deltaston family has spread their power far enough that it would be difficult to acquire an accurate list of its members on short notice. That means Pandemonium is the obvious answer. I need to head there and check inside!”

“What a pain. That’s not much of a plan, you know? That is an impregnable multi-tentacle mobile fortress. Not only can you not break open the thick Repliglass entrance, but you will likely have trouble simply crossing the vast field to reach it. I hear they have microwave anti-personnel radars and infrared searchlights.”

“There’s a way! ''It was obvious enough from the viewing platform!'' I’m pretty sure I already tricked a Government bomber into firing on Pandemonium!!”

What he needed was rather specialized, but that would not be a problem at D.R.O.K. where weapons were treated as a business. After making the necessary “arrangements”, Kyousuke and the White Queen set off toward Pandemonium.

But not everything went quite so well.

It happened when they had arrived quite close.

He had stood out too much with the White Queen accompanying him. And it was possible the Deltaston family that controlled Pandemonium was already monitoring him due to something in his missing memories.

So he should have assumed someone might try to stop him once he took action.

“Hi.”

He heard footsteps.

They were right in front of black Pandemonium’s main entrance in the empty field at the center of the donut-shaped trade show.

Two people blocked the way as if this had been planned.

One was a tall and muscular man of about 18. His black hair was set in an impressive pompadour and he wore a baggy T-shirt that reached below his hips, shorts, and oddly expensive basketball shoes. He loudly chewed bubblegum while resting a long stick made of ski material on his shoulder. That was his Blood-Sign. The bottom end was strangely swollen and metallic, but that seemed to be a stabilizer for the center of gravity. Needless to say, only a summoner would use that.

The other was a short glasses girl of about 12. She had shoulder-length wavy blonde hair and brown skin, but those colors were likely artificial rather than natural. Tan lines from a one piece swimsuit were clearly visible on her skin. She wore a sleeved cape that split into feather-like shapes at the bottom, an orange camisole, black leather hot pants to cover her small butt, an ultra-miniskirt with a jagged bottom, and boots. Her extra-large witch’s hat was a Halloween-like orange and black and had an eagle feather stuck in it. Something jangled at her neck, but it was not a necklace. A wooden ring about the size of a coffee cup saucer had several threads passing through the inside to create a pattern resembling a spider web or a rose. It was a dream catcher, an accessory made by Native Americans. She held a giant axe. Its apparent size was increased due to her short height, but it may have been another of their symbols. She was likely the vessel. The gaudy outfit on such a slender and undeveloped body may have been the “bondage” that controlled her mind. The specific vessel restraints seemed to be the piercings. Kyousuke could see the ones on her ears and navel, but it was possible she had more where he could not see.

“I suppose you wouldn’t know why we’re here, would you?”

Kyousuke felt something odd in the back of his mind.

The tingling feeling came from the scab over his memories.

“I know…”

He had no vessel and could not use the Summoning Ceremony. Nevertheless, he pulled his Repliglass Blood-Sign from his back and half-groaned his response.

“I know who you are…!!”

===Part 5===

'''(Timeline “Past”)

After acquiring an accurate diagram of Pandemonium, Shiroyama Kyousuke and Himekawa Mika waited until the night wore on before beginning their actual attack.

The field was thoroughly scanned by microwave anti-personnel radars and invisible infrared searchlights. A vast space with no cover had been transformed into a thick barrier.

After crossing it using “a certain method”, they saw something there.

Two people stood in front of Pandemonium’s massive and thick metal door.

The summoner had a pompadour and wore a baggy T-shirt and shorts.

The short vessel in glasses had bright swimsuit tan lines, an eagle father in her Halloween witch’s hat, a unique sleeved cape, an orange camisole, black hot pants, an ultra-miniskirt, a decoration around her neck, a giant decorative armor-breaking axe, and piercings across her body to bind her.

Kyousuke asked a question of that pair after pulling his Blood-Sign from his back.

“Are you pawns of Pandemonium…no, of the Deltaston family that has infiltrated all three major powers?”

“Maybe.”

The summoner grinned and raised his Blood-Sign which was made of ski material.

That signaled the beginning of the Summoning Ceremony, a battle between the gods using Materials.

“But first you can call us Government Award 501, Perfect Game!!”

===Facts===

*While a vessel has summoned a Material, the summoner cannot break the contract with that vessel.
*The Summoning Ceremony trade show named D.R.O.K. and the joint project of Pandemonium were made into an event controlled by the Deltaston family after the three major powers were manipulated into a standstill.
*Himekawa looks a lot like the woman who looked after Kyousuke when he was young.
*As a Holy Key Woman, Himekawa can immediately summon a specific Divine-class, but that does not match the conditions needed for the White Queen.
*Kyousuke had already heard the cursed words from Himekawa.
*The exact affiliation and intentions of the enemy summoner, Perfect Game, are not known. But Kyousuke seems to understand some of it from his missing memories.
*All that aside, the White Queen wants to go to a tropical island. She really, really wants to.

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| Forward to [[The_Unexplored_Summon_Blood_Sign:Volume4_Chapter2|Stage 02]]
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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume6 Chapter2

2025-02-20T04:48:08Z

Churronzon: small typo

==Chapter 2: Goddess of the Night, the Moon, and Witches – “ARADIA”x03.==

===Part 1===

Kamijou Touma was dead.

If that hadn’t been a dream, then he must have died from having that bare hand pierce right through his torso.

Yet he still heard a voice.

“Really!? Good, Old Mary, I need to ''borrow a second life''. I’ll pay you back with interest later. I just cut off the boy’s right arm, so if you resurrect him now, I can take him back!!”

All of a sudden, he felt the pull of gravity again.

No, that wasn’t it. Something was pulling him in a different direction. Which direction? Into the sky. He suddenly found himself looking down from 10 or 20 stories up. His sense of height honestly vanished once he was high enough. It was still scary, though. He heard a loud sound like whipping bedsheets next to him.

They came from giant, thin batlike wings.

They were colored a light pink and looked horribly organic and lifelike.

A woman with a pair of goatlike pink horns sticking through her fluffy blonde hair was carrying him under one arm. If he had to guess her age, he would have gone with college aged. She had the curvy silhouette of a fully-grown woman. He was so close he had failed to notice at first, but on closer inspection, the only thing covering the bright skin of her torso was a lacy pink one-piece corset similar to what a bunny girl would wear. In other words, this was lingerie with rose thorn decorations. She also wore stockings and arm covers, but they did nothing to cover up her underwear.

“Wh-wh-what the hell!?”

“Oh, dear. Are you afraid of heights? Once we escape that scary woman, I’ll let you down on a rooftop, so just hold on tight until then.”

“Why do you sound like an old lady!? That’s a Japanese monster thing, but you look like a Western demon to me!!”

“Hm, is my common tone creation not working right? Japanese is a tricky language, so combining the Far Eastern Ocean version and the Altaic Language Family version might not be enough. Brlbrlgrlgrlbeeep!! Ahem, is this how y’all talk in this part o’ the world, dearie?”

“No, it isn’t!! But I am used to people talking weird thanks to Tsuchimikado and Tatemiya!!”

“Vrbbrjr! Then I’ll stick with the initial version since it introduces less lag into the real time speech synthesis. As long as you know what I mean, the details don’t really matter.”

She called this common tone creation.

Did that mean she was combining a few standard sounds to speak, much like mechanically synthesized voices? Kamijou had heard that the voices heard on the phone weren’t actually identical to the real person’s voice and his brain was simply interpreting it as if it were a human voice. It was a chilling thought.

And magical people didn’t use machines, so he could actually see when the voice coming from her mouth changed. That made it all the more frightening. But when he thought about it, he realized all the Western magicians he had met had been weirdly familiar with different world languages. Did they study them to travel the world and read grimoires?

He had a lot of questions. Like why he didn’t seem injured despite all the blood on his clothes, what had happened to Index and Kumokawa Seria, if Othinus was down on the ground since she wasn’t on his shoulder now, and who the woman attacker had been.

But all those questions were erased from his mind by a woman’s voice shouting up from the ground.

“Bologna Succubus!!”

The woman had white skin and long silver hair.

She wore a wimple so long it fell to her ankles and something like a modified bikini that left her navel exposed. The contradictory outfit made it hard to tell if she was a holy woman or a dancer. But she wasn’t like the ghost at the train station plaza who had clearly been cosplaying. It didn’t look artificial on her. She wore the skimpy outfit as comfortably as a sweater or coat and gave off an atmosphere all her own that easily pushed back the great pressure of the Shibuya shopping district around her. It was like she made no attempt to make herself a part of the ordinary world.

That was his attacker.

She was the woman who had shattered Kamijou Touma’s spine and destroyed his torso more than once.

“Oh, god. I can just tell she’s some monster from the magic side.”

“Ding, ding, ding! Correct☆ She’s Aradia, goddess of all witches, who rules over the night and the moon. You should probably keep that name in mind, laddie.”

The demon woman grinned (even though there was still an occasional issue with her language).

The long-haired woman remained on the ground, but she didn’t look particularly worried. That seemed to hint that flying in the sky wasn’t enough to escape a magician who could surpass the laws of physics.

Fortunately, it looked like the woman was so focused on her midair target she wasn’t paying any attention to Index and Kumokawa who were still on the ground. She spoke toward the flying demon with pure anger in her voice.

“You have strange tastes yourself. The Bridge Builders Cabal does not wish to derail Alice Anotherbible. Bologna Succubus, you and Good, Old Mary are only pretending to be peaceful and reasonable. You are only wasting what little chance you still have left. You belong to the Bridge Builders Cabal too, so you must know that killing that threat is the quickest way of correcting Alice’s condition!”

This came as a shock.

Kamijou was held high in the sky below that demon woman’s arm, so he knew breaking free of her grasp would mean plunging to his death.

But now he knew this Bologna Succubus was from some group called the Bridge Builders Cabal and the woman trying to kill him was as well. There was also someone called Good, Old Mary. They had even mentioned Alice Anotherbible. He was hit by a flood of new questions, most directly related to his own survival.

Meanwhile, the Bologna Succubus was undeterred and stuck out her tongue.

“Aradia? It goes without saying that this boy only has the one life. Even if Good, Old Mary fills in the gaps with her ability to control miracles using note compilation techniques. Killing him would be easy. Easier than bringing him back, anyway. But do that and you won’t have anything left to stop Alice if she goes completely berserk. I agree we need to stop her current deviation, but I oppose killing Kamijou Touma and simply hoping that works. I can’t agree to those methods.”

“You foolish Rescuers!!”

“I’ll take that title over Killer any day of the week.”

The woman apparently named Aradia gained a new tone to her anger: exasperation.

“Alice is a problem, but don’t you find it odd that our Bridge Builders Cabal has split into two factions like this? And that never would have happened if not for him!!”

“Are you sure about that? The real problem isn’t him or Alice. All the blame falls on Anna Sprengel if you- vwoovhsfa- ask me- vwoorl.”

“Also, all those weird noises are making you hard to understand! Is it supposed to be some kind of psychological warfare?”

“Sigh. How about a brief truce so I can borrow your common tones?”

The line went dead there.

Kamijou Touma shouted aggressively at the woman holding him under her arm.

“Anna Sprengel!? What is she up to this time!?”

“I can fill you in on all the dull details once we lose Aradia, so could you please keep your mouth shut for now?”

“But I need to know how Anna and Alice are involved in all this!!”

“I’ll drop you if you keep struggling!! If you won’t shut your trap, I’ll silence you myself by jamming my pointy tail right up your asshole, boy.”

The way she smiled told him that wasn’t an idle threat, so he obediently clamped his mouth shut.

At the same time, the scenery around them melted into flowing lines.

He managed to follow the first two and a half rotations, but his eyes couldn’t keep up with the rest.

But why was she performing these acrobatics?

Two and then three blinding beams of light shot from the ground and tore through sky, slicing off a corner of a nearby building rooftop. The skyscraper’s basic structure must have been damaged because all the windows shattered at once.

Kamijou had forgotten they were being targeted, so his throat dried up.

It was New Year’s Eve in Shibuya. He couldn’t even hazard a guess at how many people were walking around below, but now they were all going to be shredded by the shards of glass. It was so horrific Kamijou shouted out loud, entirely forgetting how close to death he was himself.

“Hey!!”

“Oh, dearie me,” said an exasperated Bologna Succubus after coming to a stop in midair.

Then all the sharp shards stopped in place. Now they wouldn’t reach the people below and injure them. Kamijou wasn’t sure what kind of magic the Bologna Succubus had used, but he was seriously impressed.

“Bloody hell. ''That wasn’t me''.”

“…”

Kamijou had a very, very bad feeling about this, so he clung tightly to the demoness’s hips as a tremor ran through the thousands or tens of thousands of glass shards. Someone’s willpower entered them and then they all rushed toward him.

The transparent blades attacked from all sides with the speed of bullets, but their guided routes actually gave the Bologna Succubus an opportunity. She flew to the right, pulling the many shards with her, and then flapped her wings to launch herself the other way, slipping herself into the gap created when they gathered on the right. She just barely managed to fit through the opening in the surrounding glass.

She escaped the 100% fatal downpour of razor sharp death.

Like some kind of joker that could manipulate the numbers themselves.

But she didn’t linger on her impressive feat and kept a casual tone.

“This could be a problem. Aradia’s ''Rule of Three'' spell is supposed to be hard to use in practice, but she isn’t having any trouble at all.”

“Rule of what?”

“It’s about time I landed over there. There’s nowhere to hide in the open air and my strength won’t last in an aerial battle against a real witch.”

That was a shock.

Kamijou glanced back from under her arm, but he didn’t see Aradia there.

“An aerial battle with a witch? Wait, wait, wait, wait!! Are you telling me that Aradia woman is going to wave a wand around and fly in the sky with lots of heart and star effects like Kanamin does!?”

“Witches can fly thanks to the ointment they coat their broom with, not the broom itself. Also, wands are like staffs and clubs – they’re a symbol of patriarchal power, so female witches don’t really use them.”

Kamijou’s thoughtless comment earned him a serious critique from an expert(?). It made him feel like an uneducated dimwit, so he really wished she would stop.

With a flutter of her wings, the Bologna Succubus landed on a large shopping mall’s roof. She gave Kamijou a squeeze before releasing him from under her arm.

The carefree (underwear) woman raised her arms and stretched.

“Nhh, so this the Miyashita Ark?”

“That’s supposed to be near Shibuya Station, isn’t it? So did we circle around back there!?”

“Ah ha ha. Indubitably! It’s the last place she’ll think to look☆”

The Bologna Succubus gave a smile she never could have gotten away with without her good looks and then snatched a windblown pamphlet out of the air between two fingers.

“Let’s see. This says the Miyashita Ark is a large shopping facility created from a park that used to be a major landmark in its own right. It has everything from restaurants and boutiques to hotels. It has several entrances and a lot of foot traffic and I bet the small stores crammed inside will give it lots of blind spots.”

“Um, why does that matter?”

“Wherever we end up going, I thought it would be best to hide here until she loses our trail☆”

She might sound like an excessively kind tutorial navigator, but she was in fact a demon with no common sense. For one, she had pink horns and wings. Just like with Alice, he couldn’t simply follow her instructions. He was afraid he would find himself in Antarctica or something if he did that.

He reminded himself to stand up for himself.

“Wait, you can read Japanese? I thought you could only speak it because you were combining different tones into a false voice.”

“These kanji, hiragana, and katakana are either pictograms or derived from them. I can estimate the general meaning based on the dot pattern.”

She snapped her fingers proudly, but he had no idea what she was talking about. He knew phone cameras recognize text nowadays, so was it something like that?

That was when he felt a tremor run down his spine. Having his feet on solid ground caused the fear to fade, so maybe the reality of the situation was finally catching up to him.

“Y-you have got to be kidding me. We were flying around all over the place, but you never set up a people clearing field, did you? I’m not going to worry about the magic side’s secrets, but this is Shibuya! Do you have any idea how many phone cameras there are here!?”

“''I don’t care about the magic side’s secrets either.'' But the crazier we make it, the less real it will seem to them. Humans will refuse to accept that someone was murdered by a yeti. Even if they glimpsed a furry shape in the blizzard, their rational mind will tell them it can’t be true, so they seal away the memory all on their own.”

“Maybe, but they’ll have camera footage of this.”

“So what?”

The Bologna Succubus folded up the pamphlet and stuffed it in Kamijou’s pocket. As sexy and alluring as she was, she must have been staunchly opposed to littering.

“No one knows what’s going to happen in Shibuya when everyone is waiting for the countdown. In fact, they would ''find it unusual'' if nothing ended up happening. Most people will assume this was either a phone company’s PR stunt or some kind of video prank. Videos can be altered in real time these days, after all. It’s true R&C Occultics briefly brought magic to the general public, but how many of the youths here will connect that to this? Plus, Japan has a shame culture. People will be too afraid of embarrassing themselves by falling for something so obviously fake, so there’s nothing at all to worry about.”

She was very blunt about it. Although she may just not have particularly cared if the general public started freaking out or not.

Kamijou was worried about Index, Kumokawa, and Othinus who he had left down on the ground. He could only pray that Aradia didn’t turn her attention toward them.

But why was he so reluctant to say so out loud? He wasn’t sure how much he could really trust this demoness.

The Bologna Succubus herself bent over, raised a finger, and gave the boy a bewitching smile.

“The first and greatest barrier clouding your vision is the common sense you don’t even remember being taught. That’s a lesson any magician will have heard ad nauseum.”

“Magician?”

Were these people ''really and truly'' magicians?

Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and even the unseen Good, Old Mary ''used magic but didn’t seem like magicians'' to Kamijou. It was obvious at a glance how great their powers were. In fact, Aradia’s was so great she had to kill him more than once before he was even properly aware of it. He wasn’t sure how Good, Old Mary’s resurrection worked, but he was afraid to touch his chest and check. His caution was only natural when the bits and pieces of conversation he had overhead told him they were from the same group as Alice and Anna Sprengel.

“I’d really like an explanation now,” he said in a daze.

“And you’ll get one.”

“This isn’t the kind of thing where learning the truth makes me a target, is it?”

“Sigh. Now I see how even Alice was affected by you. I really need you to get it into your head that Aradia has already mercilessly killed you more than once and stepping peacefully down from the stage is not an option for you. Think of yourself as stuck up in a mountain mansion with a rockslide blocking the only road, a storm making hiking impossible, and the only bridge collapsed.”

She used a bewitching finger to gesture for him to follow her. As far as he could tell from behind, her wings and tail were entirely biological and moved all on their own. She did nothing at all to hide those unusual body parts or the rest of her lingerie body. She acted so superhuman that it felt strange she was leading him through an ordinary stainless-steel door into the building.

He watched her tail swishing side to side, wondering how it worked.

“Oh, you naughty boy. Do you mind not leering at my butt quite so much?”

“(What do I even say? This isn’t exactly what I would call an admirable way to live your life. They say you’re supposed to find something no one else can do, but I don’t think they meant things like showing up at the park at night in only a coat.)”

“I can hear every word of that.”

She didn’t turn around, but she did gently wrap her pink arrowhead tail around his neck. That may have been a demonic sign of affection, but it made him feel like she was leading him around on a leash. She was superhuman in more ways than one, but she appeared to enjoy being a target of attraction for the younger boy.

“Ooh, now you’re really staring something fierce. I take it you’re more of an arse man, then?”

“This is, ugh, only because, bleh, you’re pulling my head forward with your tail!”

The way she occasionally slipped into a variety of dialects continued to weird him out.

(Come to think of it, wasn’t Alice kind of similar? It was more her tone of voice, but she did seem to talk in different ways sometimes.)

Once through the door, she released him from his collar. The indoor heating warmed his entire body, reminding him just how cold it had been outside.

Customers weren’t supposed to enter from the roof, so they found themselves in a staff only passageway. A pushcart resembling a giant cage on tiny wheels was sitting by the wall.

This was the Miyashita Ark.

Kumokawa had mentioned it earlier, but what kind of shops did they have here?

The Bologna Succubus opened a random stainless steel door to reveal a women’s boutique. Some quiet screams followed. Yes, that mysterious demon still had her wings and tail out and she only wore a pink one-piece corset, stockings, and arm covers. To repeat, she was in her underwear.

But the Bologna Succubus actually posed with her hands behind her head.

“Yes, yes. If you’re going to snap some photos, just get it over with. This was all the boy’s idea, FYI. Sigh, why was I cursed to love younger boys so much I just can’t say no to anything they ask?”

“What the-!? Don’t even joke about that! They’re going to believe you! And Hell City Shibuya has so many phone cameras this kind of information spreads at the speed of light!”

Kamijou shoved on her back with both hands to get her out of there before the commotion grew to the point a security guard showed up. Although in this case, he was less afraid of getting arrested than he was of having the guard killed by this monster. Like a cat playing with a toy.

“Oh, dear. And where are you taking me for your next scandalous request I can’t ever seem to say no to? Eh heh. To the relative privacy of a dressing room, mayhap?”

“I can’t take any more of this! If you put any more pressure on me, I’ll start longing for a slow life in another world!”

The succubus let him push her through the hallway while everyone stared at them. She didn’t fight it, so she must not have had a destination in mind. While he hadn’t done it on purpose, pushing on her back with his palms caused her to arch her back and push out her chest, so every step she took caused her extra-large boobs to jiggle wildly. He was shielded from seeing them directly since he was behind her, but the glimpses he caught reflected in the show windows was enough to make him blush bright.

But no one made any real fuss about it since she didn’t protest or struggle. People must have been more willing to accept bizarre sights during a Shibuya New Year’s Eve because they were becoming no more than another piece of the background. (Did people think she was a lingerie model for a luxury boutique, or perhaps a model hired for part of a corporate event?)

The Bologna Succubus herself leaned back into his hands and let him lead her from behind while she talked.

“First of all, you can’t ask Good, Old Mary for any more help. I can understand your confusion after she brought you back from the dead a couple of times, but the next time you die, it’s for good. Keep that in mind.”

“?”

His sigh must have been enough for her to understand his confusion. She also happily let him push her around (they had to look like a lovey-dovey couple) and even smiled and waved to a small child staring at her, earning her a sharp glare from the boy’s mother.

“Hm, a detailed explanation of the alchemical formula lost in the 1st or 3rd century would probably just confuse you more. Simply put, Good, Old Mary can only repair your body’s injuries, but sealing up a wound doesn’t return the lost blood. Do you see where I’m going with this? If you’ve lost too much blood, healing your body doesn’t restart your mind. That would be meaningless.”

“Oh.”

Even if they intervened immediately after his death, it would be his third death in short succession.

And Aradia had already shattered his spine and torn a huge chunk out of his side. He had probably died of shock from the pain, but he would have lost a lot of blood too.

What happened to a human who had lost too much blood?

The Bologna Succubus spotted a rest area with a few chairs and tables near a shop with a seal mascot plastered on all their products. The lingerie woman stopped leaning against Kamijou and instead sat on a round table. Squishing her tail must have been painful or at least felt weird because she lifted her shapely butt a few times to subtly adjust its position.

“Good, Old Mary’s resurrection spell essentially repairs a dead human’s body to a clean, uninjured state at the moment of cardiac arrest. It might look like a miracle, but it is a purely medical phenomenon affecting only the physical body. She cannot directly bring back the soul itself. They will still need CPR afterwards. But repairing a body ''with all the blood missing'' is meaningless since their heart will not beat and they cannot breathe on their own. The great cost of the spell would be entirely wasted and all you would have is an intact hunk of flesh that would begin to slowly rot.”

“Seriously?”

She must have been restless because she pulled a paper napkin from the dispenser on the table and made a doglike animal out of it.

“If you’re going to die, I would recommend a bloodless method such as suffocation or poisoning, but with homicide, you don’t exactly get to choose the method. And in your case, ''that right hand has to be severed each time so it doesn’t interfere with Good, Old Mary’s magic''. That requires some blood loss no matter how you die. It would be best to just assume you can’t die again.”
Kamijou knew it had been to save him, but he still shuddered at the thought of such a dangerous choice being made without his knowledge.

Anyway, the Bologna Succubus sitting on the small table meant some part of her feast of a body would be right in his face no matter which seat he chose, so he remained standing.

“Hey, wait a second.”

“Yes?”

“So the blood I lost doesn’t come back. I get that, but what about my clothes? I didn’t have any blood on my clothes after the first time I was killed. For some reason, they were brand new and even had a price tag attached. Does that mean what I think it does?”

She didn’t answer him.

The sexy succubus seated on the round table with her long legs crossed looked the other way and whistled instead. She was so tense she crushed the dog in her hand, transforming it into a crocodile.

“Eek! Officer, this woman is a necrophile freak who loves stripping brutally murdered corpses and making them into her personal dress-up doll!!”

“Now hold on!!”

She sprang down from the table.

The superhuman didn’t care what society thought of her, but she liked to be in control of the conversation.

“B-but you would have been confuzzled if you woke up healed and found your clothes all bloody. And District 11 is a land route distribution base, so it wasn’t hard to search through the containers and find clothes from the same company. Think of it as a kindness from your all-knowing benefactor.”

“Then why do you look so flustered!?”

“I ain’t flustered!”

“There must have been a lot of blood after being pierced through the middle, so I honestly doubt it was limited to my shirt. Wait, wait. Don’t tell me you had to change my pants too.”

“…”

[[Image:GT_Index_v06_BW2.png|thumb]]

She silently refused to look him in the eye with a tinge of pink in her cheeks. She muttered to herself and awkwardly poked her index fingers together in front of her large chest.

Kamijou Touma’s adolescence finally exploded.

“Wahhhhhh!! You mean you saw everything from top to bottom!? And out in the bright morning sun!?”

“No, I- glrwrwr- I only- kshhh- you don’t under- hdfhliwrcw- verily I say- xcyq!?”

“Oh, shut up! All these weird noises are proof enough you’re badly shaken!! Just try and tell me you did nothing wrong while I record a video with this old persons smartphone!!”

“Ksshh!! But, wait, why would you want to record such a meaningless conversation!?”

As expected, the woman with a guilty heart covered her eyes with a hand and tried her hardest to stop him. She was willing to fight a fierce aerial battle with countless cameras aimed her way and she would walk through a crowded mall in nothing but her underwear, but she actually got flustered once it was one-on-one. And as much of a pervert as she was, she was still crazy strong. She had Kamijou Touma pinned to the floor in no time. With a very soft and squishy pinning technique.

After straddling a boy in her underwear at only 2 or 3 in the afternoon and stealing his phone, the woman worked to catch her breath.

“Pant, pant!! A-anyway, we need to stop Aradia now. We don’t have time for this poppycock. You do understand that, don’t you!?”

“I’m a little short on understanding at the moment, actually! For starters, who are you people and why is one of you trying to kill me!?”

That caught her by surprise.

Still straddling him, she placed a hand on her cheek and peered down at him.

“Really? This world never ceases to surprise me. But I guess it would take a natural to pull off such a feat.”

“What feat?”

“Alice Anotherbible.”

That name made him gasp.

The demon woman flapped her wings behind her and sighed in exasperation.

“I suppose I should ask: how much do you know about her?”

“She’s a weird, invincible girl who’s working with Anna Sprengel in some way.”

He heard the quiet slap of the Bologna Succubus smacking her palm against her forehead while still straddling him. Perhaps making such an extraordinary monster facepalm was worth a reward in and of itself.

“Cripes, you mean I have to tell you about the Bridge Builders Cabal and the Transcendents too?”

“In as much detail as possible please.”

She granted the request asked from beneath her.

Maybe she liked to talk and maybe she liked to help out those in need, but the demoness stretched on top of him and answered.

“Nhhh, okay! You don’t really have to understand what that girl is as long as you’re aware she possesses an ''extremely dangerous power.'' Alice is a step above the other Transcendents in the Bridge Builders Cabal. But I hear you’re her ‘teacher’. That makes you the only person in the world who Alice Anotherbible respects and will listen to. Do you really think the rest of us Transcendents in the cabal are going to sit idly by with someone that dangerous out there?”

Teacher.

Come to think of it, hadn’t she called him that all throughout the incident on the 29th?

And thinking back, why had someone so powerful been so fond of him and done everything he asked? He didn’t have a clear answer there.

But that aside…

“Alice directly rejected me. She said I didn’t need her.”

“The people who need her and the people who she respects are two very different things. Really, she only feels exasperation for the people who refuse to face reality, withdraw into a fairy tale world, and reveal their bright, selfish colors.”

“…”

This still left the fundamental question of what exactly Alice Anotherbible was.

The Bologna Succubus knew the answer, but she considered the imminent threat more important. And that threat was of course to Kamijou Touma’s life since he was weak this demon could pin him down with ease.

“This sent shockwaves through out cabal. We couldn’t decide on how to deal with Alice’s ‘teacher’.”

“So you split between the Rescuers and the Killers?”

“Right. The Killers want to kill the source of the change forthwith to return Alice to normal. It’s certainly a simple plan, but also a risky one since it leaves no way to influence Alice if killing you doesn’t return her to normal. Then there’s the Rescuers like Good, Old Mary and me. We want to leave you alive and monitor the situation because we don’t know how your death would influence Alice.”

“So you’re-”

“Not so fast.” She cut him off and placed a bewitching finger on his lips while still seated on him. “To be clear, that does not make us your allies. That is our plan ''for now''. If we run the numbers and discover that killing you wouldn’t influence Alice at all or that allowing her ‘teacher’ to live would exacerbate the situation, then that plan changes. The threat is Alice, so we have no reason to protect you personally or any obligation to never betray you.”

“…”

The Bridge Builders Cabal was their own side. The Transcendents (is that what she called them?) were acting in their own interests.

This was a group Anna Sprengel had chosen to join, so he shouldn’t have expected them to be decent people.

The Bologna Succubus returned his phone to him and finally lifted her hips from his stomach.

“We are using you to influence Alice who controls the future of our cabal, so you use me to protect your own life. Do you understand the rules now?”

“No.” He looked up at the ceiling in thought before continuing. “I’ll be doing this for Alice too. It doesn’t matter to me what you and your cabal think.”

“I see. So this is her ‘teacher’.”

She breathed an exasperated sigh and extended a slender hand. He took it and she pulled him to his feet.

“You and Alice certainly are incompatible. ''Fundamentally so.'' You might have as much desire as the next person, but you lack the openings she needs to get at you. But that may be why she sees something in you she lacks herself.”

“What are you talking about?”

He gave her a puzzled look and she bowed before rubbing his stomach with her mystery pink horns.

“Ugh, really?”

“Ow!! Those horns kind of hurt!? Enough with the cow attack!”

“Having big boobs doesn’t make a cow, you know? Demons traditionally have goat horns. And I’m not explaining any more of this because Alice would kill me if I ruined it for her.”

He only had more questions than when he had started, but something unrelated to him caught his attention.

Why were the supposedly transcendent Bologna Succubus and Aradia so afraid of Alice? Yes, she had fearsome power, but she had the personality of a cheerful girl and that didn’t seem so dangerous to him.

He asked and she reacted with utter disbelief.

After giving him the look Academy City residents gave the PR posters claiming Academy City was a clean and superb educational institute where you would know your child was safe and in good hands, Transcendent Bologna Succubus leaned her face in front of his and replied.

“You don’t actually believe Alice must be safe because she’s an innocent child, do you?”

“Eh? But she doesn’t seem to be hiding anything.”

“That’s not the point.” The demon woman shrugged. “I’m asking if you believe there is no danger in ''a young heart too innocent to even hold any interests or beliefs''. To be blunt, I think children are a violent and cruel lot. They flood anthills and laugh about it. So what happens if you give one of those tyrant tots enough power to destroy the universe?”

“…”

Was that part of being childish?

Had it just never shown itself with him because she was willing to do anything he asked?

“Alice is frightening,” said the Transcendent. She even held her own bare shoulders and shrank down like a lost child. “''Shit-your-pants terrifying even.'' Around her, her mood trumps everything else in the world. There is no surefire method or guaranteed strategy. The same exact thing could get a different reaction each and every time. She might have smiled about it yesterday, but what if she happens to be in a bad mood today? Speaking with her is like trying to dig up all the randomly-distributed mines in a minefield where the layout changes every day.”

“Seriously? I find it hard to believe we’re talking about the same Alice here.”

“That’s the thing. She seems entirely different to you because you didn’t even realize what you were doing. Getting through an off-the-cuff conversation with Alice Anotherbible and living to tell the tale is a miraculous tightrope walk. And you even scolded her when she did the wrong thing. That I’ve never seen before.”

She was innocent and pure

For better or for worse, Kamijou Touma was her favorite, but this was an interpretation of those traits he hadn’t considered.

He shook his heavy head and the Bologna Succubus continued while coiling her tail around her index finger.

“You might have a hard time believing it after we dragged you into this mess and killed you twice, but the Bridge Builders Cabal is a gathering of people who want to fulfill a selfless dream. And that includes Aradia.”

“Eh?”

“Over the long span of history, she has fought to save the persecuted witches, protect them from prejudice and discrimination, and give them a safe place to live. So she will do whatever it takes to accomplish that goal. The scary part is she won’t compromise with anyone fighting for a different goal. Because she doesn’t care what happens to anyone ''other than the witches she has dedicated her life to''.”

“Persecuted witches? But that’s ancient history. Why is she still fighting for that?”

“How would you respond if the goth girl who moved in next door came up to you, smiled, and introduced herself as a real witch?”

“…”

“You wouldn’t know how to respond, would you? And yet you wouldn’t mind at all if she was a shrine maiden, a nun, or any other identity that society has decided is legitimate, ''no matter how outdated and unscientific it is''. From that very first moment, you’ve built a big old wall in your head. You might not even be consciously aware of it, but the old prejudices still exist there on the subconscious level. It doesn’t matter how many smartphones, drones, and scientific espers the world has created.”

“Then…” Kamijou gulped before asking. “''You have a goal like that too''?”

“That’s a question for after the sun sets, boy. My hot and steamy secrets are a little too spicy for the daytime crowd☆”

She refused to answer him while holding her hands to her cheeks, twisting her body restlessly, and smiling like this was all a big joke.

Could he track down what it was she wanted to protect if he learned where the name “Bologna Succubus” came from?

“The point is we all have our reasons to want to change the world.”

“…”

“That would be fine on its own, but the problem is we all have to agree how the world needs to change. You see, each and every one of us Transcendents is powerful enough to rival the entire magic side on our own.”

That casual revelation left Kamijou speechless.

The claim was absurd, but the way she looked weirdly proud of it made it sound real, which scared him.

“Hence, the Anglicans and the Roman Catholics can’t stop us in their usual ways. Well, some of us may be closer to what the Russian Orthodoxes are used to dealing with. But anyway.” She threw out that topic like it wasn’t important. “If one of us forces what we want on the rest, another one won’t be happy and they might just obliterate the ideal world we had spent so much time and effort creating. Because ''destroying a world is so much easier than creating or protecting one.'' So whatever we end up doing with the world, the entire cabal needs to be onboard before we can start working on it.”

Was it similar to two countries with fundamentally different religions and economies discussing their plans for the future with massive armies staring each other down?

If either side got fed up and left the negotiating table, the world could be torn to shreds.

The button triggering war sat within reach of them all.

“Which is why Aradia isn’t the biggest threat in the cabal. Her goal of protecting the witches gives you a carrot you can dangle in front of her to control her. Maybe you can’t fully control her that way, but you at least know what landmine to avoid stepping on at all costs with her. In other words, she might be hard to bring to your side, but you can challenge her any number of times without her causing too much trouble. The more we talk, the better my chances with her. Because once I know the trick to avoiding that landmine, I can avoid it no matter what.”

In that sense, there was one joker who couldn’t be controlled and didn’t even have a clearly-marked minefield.

“And then there’s Alice, huh?”

“She is innocent, capricious, and endlessly cruel and merciless toward anything she doesn’t like. The rules with her are poorly defined in both directions, so it’s hard to work out how to handle her. And the going rate is so absurdly high that a single mistake could mean losing your life. But no matter how hopeless it looks, we have to speak with her. Because without everyone’s approval – even hers – any world we make will fail and be destroyed.” The Bologna Succubus’s tail swayed side to side. “That is why we have decided to have Alice create the new world herself. Because no matter what complaints she might have, we can press her to look after her own creation.”

“She’ll be doing it herself?”

“Who makes it doesn’t really matter. As long as the new world gives us all what we want.”’

Was that similar to how everyone just let America take the lead at international conferences as long as it helped create a peaceful world?

“Once god creates a world, he won’t give up on it and create a second one next door just because the humans living there keep screwing up and polluting the land. He might wash it clean with a massive flood or something, but that’s just god making some adjustments. He’s still sticking with the world he created in the first place. That’s basically the cabal’s plan for crossing the verbal tightrope walk that is the Alice problem. ''Or it was.''”

But it hadn’t worked out.

Anna Sprengel had barged into the Bridge Builders Cabal and done something to Alice. Something that made her unnaturally attached to Kamijou Touma despite having never met him before.

This was on a completely different dimension from the cold military and financial calculations.

Kamijou Touma’s importance had skyrocketed like the first lady whispering in the president’s ear to take control of the international conference.

This was why she scared them.

Alice’s unpredictable innocence truly terrified them.

They could have everything 99.9% settled in their discussions and then some last-second emotion could send it all tumbling down, shattering the world they were trying to build. So even if they inspired some short term anger in Alice Anotherbible, those transcendent beings had decided it was worth taking the long view and killing this source of instability before he caused any real problems.

Actions born of a grudge or desire might eventually fade away on their own.

But actions fueled by fear would never spontaneously disappear.

They were two very different things. Just like the exact same number in a bankbook would mean very different things if it was in the savings column or the debts column.

“Do you see how ridiculously important you are now, boy? Think of it like you hold a big button in your hand. You can whisper in Tyrant Alice’s ear to manipulate her actions, so you are capable of obliterating the entire world along with our cabal. Of course, that would mean absolute extinction where no one wins.”

“You can’t be serious. Alice was basically dragging me around everywhere. And what makes you think I can just control her like that? I’m not that #5 I’ve heard rumors about.”

“Oh, it would be very possible for you. And frankly, it doesn’t matter if you personally intend to do so nor not. ''Whether we’ve sided with the Killers or the Rescuers, every single Transcendent in the Bridge Builders Cabal is prepared to pull out all the stops over how we should deal with the kind of ordinary high school boy you can find anywhere.''”

“You must be joking.”

“Now, we need to come up with a plan. Aradia is coming and I remind you ''she is one of the Transcendents who singlehandedly rivals the entire magic side.'' Losing her for the time being isn’t enough to declare yourself safe. She can search us out and make another attack.”

“How can you be so sure she’s coming? What can she even do when she doesn’t know where we are?”

“I reckon she’s already workin’ on that.” The Bologna Succubus shrugged in apparent unconcern and spoke in a tone that didn’t hint at her true feelings. “She’s already preparing her attack using a Wiccan spell named Triple Reload.”

===Part 2===

In the Shibuya shopping district, another Transcendent, Aradia, was the center of attention.

That was to be expected when she didn’t bother concealing herself with a people clearing field. It didn’t take any knowledge of how magic worked to tell this witch goddess was firing beams and trying to shoot down a flying object.

However, this didn’t trigger a panic with people shoving or even trampling each other.

“Wow.”

An eyepatch ghost girl wearing a translucent raincoat over a swimsuit-based costume was standing a short distance away and aiming her phone’s camera toward the woman with long silver hair swaying side to side. The excitement had begun without warning, so the girl had failed to record the climax. That was a common enough problem for video posters, but she had still tapped the record button even if just to provide a timestamp for the event. A video that missed the crucial moment people most wanted to see could still gather enough attention to get some serious numbers.

(That is really high quality. Is this a corporate PR stunt combining live magic tricks with a video zooming through the sky? This is professional stuff. There must be a film crew somewhere around here because she wouldn’t dare walk around in that modified bikini otherwise. Really, her bare feet are the most impressive part. I mean, it’s New Year’s Eve. But I thought Blau said the Magical Powered Kanamin stuff was going down in Ariake today.)

“Damn, grownups have such big boobs. Oops.”

Something dripped onto her screen.

The bright yellow drop covering one corner of the LCD screen appeared to be melted cheese. It must have fallen from a hot snack someone in the crowd was eating. Probably a mysterious Korean item being sold at one of the food trucks in the area.

“Ugh, really?”

She reached for her pocket on reflex, but the translucent raincoat was for streaming. It would be a buzzkill to have a handkerchief or tissues visible in her pocket, so she didn’t have any. She also couldn’t wipe the drip off with the baggy sleeves. The melted cheese stretched stickily down the entire screen, but if she got even the sleeve of this costume dirty, the stain would still be there during the countdown.

Just as she was trying to figure out what to do, someone held out a pack of tissues.

That someone was the silver-haired witch dressed like a dancer plus an ankle-length wimple.

“Take one.”

“Um!?”

She had been recording this person from afar in order to post a video just for the hell of it, but now the woman was right next to her. The pressure coming from the woman was powerful indeed and the girl was frankly terrified. She had a bad feeling about this.

The woman must have been used to gathering attention because she ignored the rest of the crowd.

“Don’t worry about it. I only just received them over there.”

“I-I see.”

The eyepatch ghost was surprised to learn even this otherworldly professional(?) would accept the packs of tissues people handed out. The ad on the pack said they were recruiting women and provided a location and time without any further description, which set off her sexual harassment alarm. She felt like a model’s manager was supposed to prevent people from approaching you for a job like this on the street.

But a voice interrupted that thought.

“Listen, that is melted cheese, not mustard. The heat can damage the protective film and maybe even the liquid crystals if you don’t wipe it up soon.”

“Yikes, really!? But this is the top-of-the-line model that only came out this fall!!”

The fuzzy unreality of the situation vanished and she took one of the tissues. It was a similar feeling to hearing a disaster alert from her phone while trembling within a haunted house. Now that she had taken the tissue on reflex, she balled it up and wiped off her phone’s screen.

The skimpily-dressed witch was already wandering off somewhere else. From behind, her ankle-length wimple hid her silhouette and even her long silver hair. She might as well have been wrapped in a bedsheet.

The raincoat eyepatch ghost called out to her as she left.

“Th-thank you?”

“No need to thank me.” The woman didn’t even look back. “''I have already been rewarded with triple interest.''”

“…?”

The ghost didn’t like the sound of the word interest there.

She felt like it was a little rude after what just happened, but she aimed her freshly cleaned phone toward the alluring witch again.

That woman was up to something.

The ghost watched it all through her phone camera.

“Thanks!”

At one point, she pulled a dropped train card out from under a vending machine and received the thanks and smile of a small child.

“My, my. How kind of you.”

At one point, she separated two fighting dogs and received a polite bow from the elderly couple who were having trouble holding onto the leash of their powerful Doberman.

“Wait, how did you do that? This truck doubles as a temporary stage, so it has to weigh more than 10 tons.”

At one point, she used a mysterious barrier of light to push back a truck about to plow into the scramble crossing, turning the truck half to scrap, saving the lives of the pedestrians, and earning a fearful look from one of the young men she had just saved.

Eventually, the ghost looked up from her phone’s screen.

She was unable to believe what that brand-new LCD screen was showing her, so she had wanted to see it for herself.

“What the heck?”

And the Shibuya girl had seen something truly unexpected.

It was often said that seeing is believing, but that wasn’t always the case.

''She had seen it for herself, but she still couldn’t believe it or even understand it.

That woman used her bare hands to separate two fierce dogs and then to deflect an enormous truck without even touching it. She was clearly doing something here and that power was growing at an accelerating rate.

Now that something was clearly wrong here, the Shibuya crowd kept their distance, giving the creepy witch enough space to wander around on her own. That distance was usually a terrible insult for anyone living in Shibuya, yet the witch somehow managed to shine brighter than anyone else there. And something strange and unseen began to swirl around her.

All she ever did was small good deeds.

But each new kindness expanded the spatial distortion around her. It was like a small snowball growing ever bigger as it rolled down a snowy mountain.

''“No need to thank me.”

The witch’s concerning words replayed in the ghost’s head.

''“I have already been rewarded with triple interest.”

She looked down at her own hands and clenched and unclenched them a few times. Almost like she was checking on the strength they contained.

The phone’s lip-reading function drew a box around her lips and tracked their movement with greater precision than human senses ever could.

That told the ghost what the silver-haired witch said with a thin smile.

“Yes, this should do nicely.”

===Part 3===

Inside the Miyashita Ark, the demon wearing a one-piece corset similar to a pink bunny suit costume stopped absentmindedly massaging Kamijou’s earlobe and looked to the side.

“Here it comes.”

“?”

Kamijou didn’t even have time to tilt his head.

''Splat!!

A realistic human face was pressed up against the large window in that fashion space.

The sticky ochre color formed an expression of agony.

The features were distorted like someone with a stocking over their head.

It was an entrails-like liquid that felt out of place in the shiny, artificial Miyashita Ark. Terror crawled along Kamijou’s spine as he watched it change color into something even less pleasant, like bile or rotten butter.

Gravity gradually pulled the human face goop down the glass.

Or so it seemed.

In truth, a more complicated force was at work. It formed a neck, a torso, and finally limbs. As the shape grew like dripping ink spreading across a surface, it gradually formed a full human silhouette.

“We need to skedaddle, boy.”

“Eh? But what is that?”

“Aradia has begun her ''search''! If that catches us, the witch goddess will know where we are and attack!!”

The yellowish silhouette began to move like a shadow sliding across the floor or wall. It moved faster than the average car. The Bologna Succubus didn’t wait for him to respond. She held him to her large chest and placed her butt on a nearby round table, removing her feet from the floor. As soon as the sticky silhouette slid across the floor below them, she tugged on his hand and ran in the opposite direction.

It immediately turned back around.

Almost like their feet had touched the surface of a river teeming with piranhas.

“Tch! Can the spell detect anything that contacts the same surface, be it the floor or a wall!?”

The Bologna Succubus picked Kamijou up again and caught the air with her pink bat wings.

She took flight.

Kamijou felt their tremendous acceleration while he heard screams erupting from all around. The Bologna Succubus made sure not to contact the floor, the walls, or the ceiling. She soared down the center of an empty passageway with the precise control of a fighter jet skimming just off the ground to fly below an overpass.

The yellowish silhouette on the floor seemed to hesitate for a moment.

The next stage was already underway.

Splat, splat, splat, splat!! More sticky faces appeared on the walls and ceiling around them to pursue the fleeing Bologna Succubus. They were like the line of bullet holes from a machinegun. And each one of those faces drew out a new silhouette.

“They’re chasing us! Doesn’t that mean she already knows where we are!?”

“If she did, she wouldn’t use this search spell that gives us advance warning. Once she knows our coordinates in 3D space, she would fire an insect repellant spell that tears through all the buildings in between us and her current location.”

“Insect what???”

“Insect repellant. Controlling nature to help crops grow is one of the most common jobs for witches. Although Aradia’s version locates all of the insects and exterminates them.”

Kamijou had no words. Magic was always absurd and unfair, but he had never expected to be killed by the cousin of a scarecrow or one of those big eyeball balloons.

But the Bologna Succubus wasn’t done yet.

“So don’t get the wrong idea, boy. I doubt this is limited to the Miyashita Ark!”

“What?”

“''These faces and silhouettes will be inside every single indoor space in Shibuya!'' We were simply caught in her thorough search!!”

That meant leaving the Miyashita Ark wouldn’t be enough to escape the search. Once their location was discovered, Aradia would attack with her full power. And that woman had already demonstrated her ability to tear through Kamijou’s body with her bare hands and to fire brutal beams of light at the flying demon.

“Then what’s happening to Index or Kumokawa-senpai right now!? And Othinus too!”

“Imbecile! Worry about yourself first!!”

The Bologna Succubus must have realized the same thing as him because she landed on the model blimp decorating the central area. The model hung in midair with its weight distributed over several hundred wires thinner than hairs. It looked a lot like a balloon, but it had to weigh as much as a small truck.

Yes, the face and silhouettes were on the floor, walls, and ceiling, ''but everywhere else was safe.

The yellowish goo silhouettes slid along the walls and ceiling around them, but none of them arrived at the blimp. But none of them went away either. The flat figures moved endlessly around the area as if to surround the two of them.

“Doesn’t look like this will fool them forever. There are so many people in Shibuya, but they’re waiting here and ignoring all those other people.”

“Indeed. But this gives us some time to think. A few minutes at least.”

“So these are Aradia’s eyes and ears, right? If we can’t escape them, I could always destroy them with my right hand.”

“Think of them like security cameras. If they start failing in one specific area, Aradia will notice. That would bring her straight here.”

Maybe it was to keep wingless Kamijou from falling off the unsteady footing, but the Bologna Succubus sat on the balloon-like blimp, wrapped her arms around his head, and pulled him to her chest.

“Witchcraft includes plenty of divination using water or fire as well as wind spells using rope knots, but use of ointments is far more common. From the look of things, I would guess Aradia is using bear grease.”

“Mgh.”

“I believe it was in May of 1940 during World War Two that some British witches attempted to curse Germany in order to protect their homeland. Stripping nude in the freezing forest and dancing throughout the night sounds like suicide, but they attempted to fight the cold by covering their bodies in an ointment made of bear grease. Although in the original ceremony, some of them froze to death along with the old woman who had volunteered to be their sacrifice.”

“Mghghgh, bghghghgh.”

“But how did she transform that into a searching spell? Bear grease is meant for defense, so did she designate us as the human skin it needs to cover in order to protect us from the cold? If so, what exactly is she using to search us out? Oil, grease, wax? I know witches can curse someone by placing the target’s blood or fingernail in a wax doll and piercing it with a nail. No, that isn’t it. Then what is it? And what is with you, boy?”

“Bwah, cough, cough! Are you trying to suffocate me to death with these bags of happiness!!”

Kamijou finally managed to extract his red face from the young woman’s very large chest. She must have been doing it subconsciously like she was holding a stuffed animal, so she simply smiled politely and waved a hand dismissively.

“My bad. When a cute and sexy young woman like me sees a head right in front of her, she can’t help but start patting it.”

“I don’t care what you’re into and this isn’t about the hands on the back of my head – it’s about the suffocation of my face!!”

“Don’t act like you didn’t enjoy it. Besides, I already apologi- hm?”

The red of his face was probably more than just embarrassment. It was a more serious SOS signal sent from his oxygen-deprived brain.

However.

“I see. I didn’t think of that.”

“Wh-what now? Why are you staring at me?”

“I’m just realizing that worrying over things on your own doesn’t solve anything. The secret to a long life is listening to others☆”

===Part 4===

''Splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat, splat!!

The thick and sticky white and yellow was reminiscent of rotten slugs.

It was in fact raw animal grease.

An unbelievable number of those disgusting faces were plastered to the windows and walls where they dripped down to form bizarre silhouettes. The process was disgusting to watch. Screams erupted from all around and a crowd fled from a shopping building offering excellent New Year’s Eve bargains. There were some young people holding clothing not in a bag and some of them may have used the panic to avoid paying.

“Phew.”

Aradia, goddess of witches and ruler of the night and the moon, sighed below the night sky.

The Wiccan world operated under the Rule of Three.

That rule stated that any magic used by a witch – whether it was used for a good deed or a bad – would be returned to the user at thrice the strength.

So a witch that used magic to steal money would lose three times as much and a witch that used magic to kill someone would receive a wound three times as lethal.

Aradia heard a dull thud.

She looked down with her long silver hair swaying and saw a small boy on the verge of tears. She also saw a crepe-like stain on her ankle-length wimple.

“''I see.''”

Someone must have stolen some clothing using the panic caused by her magic and now she was paying for it. The sartorial loss had returned to her three times larger.

The witch goddess placed her hand on the boy’s head and soothed his tearful emotion.

(I should really consider myself fortunate three times the negative result wasn’t any worse than that. The biggest concern is people getting trampled in the commotion. Even if I do have a spell prepared to dodge any trouble caused by these events.)

Aradia existed to save all witches, so her own personal issues were secondary. Her priority was Kamijou Touma who was indirectly guiding Alice and could end up ruining the Transcendents’ plans for his own personal ends. She knew he meant no harm, but with the entire world at stake, he was more dangerous than a wicked temptress leading a king astray.

In the area known as Shibuya, there were 38,020 buildings with 5,030,750 rooms. She only knew the exact numbers because the bear grease had told her.

She had eliminated all the artificial blind spots, but she still hadn’t found Kamijou Touma and the Bologna Succubus.

“I suppose they wouldn’t just be standing out in the open.”

That meant her next task was to see if there were any faces or silhouettes caught in an unnatural loop anywhere. Half of half of half of half of them were. She used that additional search condition to narrow things down. If the Bologna Succubus was somehow deceiving the search, her quarry had to be near the grease behaving oddly.

“Time for some good deeds.”

If she wanted to find someone, she just had to invite in that result.

If she found someone that someone else was searching for, she would be repaid threefold.

The crepe boy appeared to have gotten separated from his parents in the panic. ''How fortunate.'' She crouched down to his eye level, smiled, and worked at “reloading” her spell. The good deed of finding the boy’s parents would return to her but three times as powerful.

She didn’t want anything from the boy.

She only wanted ''the simple act'' of performing a good deed.

She used her conversational skills to earn the boys trust, so he held onto the side of her hip while she performed a simple divination to find his parents and walked through the streets of Shibuya.

“Now, is this the destiny of the world handing out fortune and misfortune? Or is it the sparks of disaster created from the interphasal pressure caused by the magic I use? Either way, I will be taking back my action with an exorbitant amount of interest.”

===Part 5===

A clear change came over the yellowish silhouettes moving along the walls and ceiling.

Their endless looping ended and now they were focused on their target.

“Drat,” said the Bologna Succubus while spreading her wings.

A moment later, the disgusting grease rushed in along the thin wires supporting the model blimp. They would have been trapped if the demon woman holding Kamijou didn’t have wings.

“Did she increase the quality of the search!?” asked Kamijou.

“Clearly so! This is going to be rough flight, so hold on tight and don’t let your embarrassment stop you!!”

But it wasn’t going to end with just that.

It no longer mattered that they were in the air. The Bologna Succubus took a zigzagging path akin to a lightning bolt to avoid touching the floor, walls, or ceilings while she flew across a space containing a matcha cafe and a boutique. The number of yellowish silhouettes pursuing them was growing by the second. Did that mean the search spell was almost certain they were here now?

“But I’ve figured out some things myself.”

“?”

“Aradia’s ointment is bear grease. That was originally a defensive ointment meant to protect a naked witch from the winter chill. But if she had set the search to simply attach itself to any human skin it was meant to protect, all the girls around here would be coated in the sticky stuff. But she only wants to track us down, so she must have given it a more specific search condition. No doubt about it.”

“But what is that condition!?”

“Something that would mix with the animal grease rubbed on the witch’s body: the microscopic ecosystem of germs and bacteria found on anyone’s skin! That is also what determines your skin quality and the scent of your hair, so it will always differ between two people. The witches have always known a lot about handling medicinal herbs, so they used nothing but their own experiences to figure out fermentation and decomposition!!”

“But that means there’s no escaping it!”

“Does it, though? Heh heh heh☆”

The Bologna Succubus used her full speed flight to break through an aluminum alloy door and rolled across the floor, using her arms and wings to doubly protect Kamijou. He felt like they must have rolled all the way across one room and into another. He groaned and extracted his face from her chest.

He saw a tile floor.

Triple sets of faucets, showerheads, and mirrors lined one wall. And the intense humidity came from a bath so large it could be mistaken for a small pool.

The room they rolled right through must have been the dressing room.

Which made this…

“Is this a hot spa!?”

“I was already interested in Japan’s strange bath culture, so this kills two birds with one stone!”

Instead of getting up, the Bologna Succubus used her tail to pull the closest faucet’s lever.

“You might be interested to know that this is the women’s bath.”

“Is now really the time!?”

At least there wasn’t anyone else there.

Scalding hot water poured down on their heads just as several yellowish silhouettes passed through the door they had broken through and crawled along the tile floor and walls.

The room was twice the size of a classroom, but it was taken over in no time.

According to the Bologna Succubus, Aradia’s search spell was pursuing its targets using the microscopic ecosystem on their skin. That meant it could perhaps be evaded by either washing that off or by covering themselves in a liquid film.

“…”

Kamijou and the demoness soaked themselves in water above 40 degrees and rolled into the large tub.

Then they watched the silhouettes crawling along the wall nearby.

This was terrifying. Too terrifying to even gulp.

With white steam filling the air, the silhouettes of yellowish grease moved stickily around like they were dripping down the walls toward the mirrors. And just as it looked like they would reach the mirrors, they slipped into the gap between wall and mirror. Kamijou was so close he could hear the gross sounds of the bear grease moving. He also noticed a stench similar to rotten butter.

The movement stopped there.

At precisely Kamijou Touma’s eye level, something wriggled out from behind the mirror and onto its surface. Water and oil didn’t mix, so even after washing himself off with water so hot it hurt his skin, he wouldn’t have gotten rid of the entire threat. But the yellowish silhouette staring at him was only a shape, so it did not have any functional eyes. Nevertheless, he imagined the pressure of its gaze.

He wanted to fight back.

He wanted to shout at the top of his lungs and slam his right fist into the mirror. He wanted to be freed from this situation.

His body writhed unnaturally along with his heartbeat, but the demoness held him tight.

“(Be strong. You’re a boy, aren’t you?)”

That clued him into something.

The yellowish grease silhouette at his eye level did not react to her whispered voice. It lacked any auditory organs. The bear grease did not react no matter how close it was. If they lacked eyeballs and eardrums, they probably lacked every other senses as well.

This one was right in front of him and shared the same space as him, but that wasn’t what mattered.

The landmine would not trigger unless they touched it.

(Bear with it.)

He heard a sticky sound.

The yellowish grease on the mirror slid to the side and away from them like it had finally lost interest.

“Phew.”

And just as Kamijou let out the breath he had been holding the entire time, something dripped onto his head.

“………………………………………………………………………………”

It had an ochre coloration.

A yellowish silhouette was stuck to the ceiling and a single drop had fallen onto his head. And he touched it. First with his head and then with his right hand when he thoughtlessly reached up to see what he had felt on his head.

The gross liquid burst with a quiet popping sound.

And just like with security cameras, its destruction would be relayed to Aradia.

“Uh, oh.”

Not a moment later, the concrete wall was blown away as a witch beam shot their way.

===Part 6===

It was actually a pair of lips.

But Kamijou only identified the 10m squished elliptical shape torn in the wall after blowing away the beam with his right hand.

He was looking at a massive, deadly kiss mark.

Even her attacks had a somehow sexual aspect to them, perhaps because she was a witch.

The slender woman appeared in the hot spa like she had passed through a natural cave, but even that was odd.

Her long silver hair and giant wimple were spread wide behind her.

Maybe it was the temperature difference with the outside air, but the bath’s white steam was even more noticeable now.

Still soaked, Kamijou raised his fist and his voice.

“H-how the hell did you get in here!? We’re nowhere near the ground floor!”

“What kind of witch can’t fly?”

The yellowish grease silhouettes gathered around Aradia’s feet on the wet floor. They surrounded her like a strange flower or like cultists bowing toward the statue of their goddess.

The Bologna Succubus joined the conversation with her feet planted on the floor covered in bathwater, rubble, and filthy grease.

“Aradia!! How do you plan to survive the massive triple return for all this destruction!? All your bad deeds are turned back on you, so any magic you use here will only come back to destroy you in the end!”

“Will it? Then how am I standing here ''after killing him more than once''?”

“?”

Kamijou gasped.

Aradia pressed two fingers against her lips and blew gently through the gap between them. That was enough to produce an earsplitting high-pitched roar and an invisible shockwave passed right by Kamijou and the Bologna Succubus, breaking down the hot spa’s wall.

“Tch! The witches of the forests can control the winds to shake the royal ships! But doing this will only hurt you in the end!”

“It is true I am destroying this building, but who says that counts as a bad deed?”

“Hold on a tick. Aradia, don’t tell me…”

“What about someone who holds a grudge against the spa after being refused entrance? I bet the environmentalists worried about CO2 emissions would inwardly rejoice and claim I was saving the future by destroying a large bath that runs its giant boiler nonstop. Whether an act qualifies as a good or bad deed ''depends entirely on your point of view.'' So all I have to do is acquire the necessary point of view or interpretation needed to make me the good guy in everything I do. After that, Triple Reload loses its thorns.”

In that case, Aradia wouldn’t be affected by the triple return of her bad deeds that usually ensured witches did the right thing.

She snapped her fingers and several lights and sounds burst out.

Kamijou froze after realizing that was the gas pipe rupturing, but a soft sensation had already surrounded his mind by then. Aradia herself had tightly surrounded his body with her ankle-length purple fabric to protect him.

But he knew what that had to mean.

“''I have protected an innocent life from an explosion.''”

“Dammit. Dodge, Bologn-!!”

The Bologna Succubus had not been protected from the blast, so she flinched just long enough for Aradia’s long leg to jab her barefoot heel into the center of her gut. It didn’t look like an ordinary kick. The demoness had already been hit by the gas explosion, but then it was like a thick invisible wall slammed into her with three times the force. She was flung through the air and rolled all the way into the dressing room.

Aradia gently rubbed Kamijou’s head and gave him an adoring smile.

“This is what it means to receive triple the blessing of your own good deeds. Hee hee. And that triple can be stacked on top of itself as many times as necessary. Give me the chance and it will snowball far beyond anything you can handle. All I have to do is perform good deeds throughout my everyday life – ''or set things up so my actions are interpreted that way'' – and my power will eventually grow to the point that I can one-shot a Magic God or a Transcendent.”

“Kh.”

“And that judgment is made by the invisible monster known as the local ‘mood’. Or maybe you could call it the general consensus. Just like a class rep can criticize students for breaking the rules, but that very class rep can be labeled a tyrant if an outsider who doesn’t care if they are criticized manages to tilt the class’s consensus in their direction. All I need to do is monitor the current local ‘mood’ and adapt my actions accordingly. Then everything will be judged good.”

She saved people for malicious reasons.

She used people’s appreciation of good deeds and kindness to obtain the power needed to take lives.

Or in other words, she was a witch.

“Aradia!?”

“Killing you would be easy.”

Shouting her name was all Kamijou could manage.

He felt like his arms and torso were being squeezed by a thick crane wire or something, but that wasn’t the case. The constriction came from the two slender arms contained within the giant piece of cloth that fell to her ankles. Had kicking away the Bologna Succubus somehow been interpreted as a kindness or a good deed? He couldn’t break free. He heard a disconcerting creaking coming from his body, but was that his arms, his ribs, or his spine?

“Gah!?”

The squeezing of his ribs may have been applying pressure to his lungs because he had trouble breathing.

But he doubted he was going to suffocate to death. If he was going to die here, it would be from his flesh, bones, and organs all being crushed together.

“I must protect the witches.”

Aradia, on the other hand, was smiling thinly.

She displayed the unique joy of someone who had completed their task and was freed from all that tension.

“You would lead Alice to ruin our cabal’s plans and possibly even destroy the world we already have, so killing you is the same as saving the world – making it a very good deed indeed. So rest in peace. You have no chance of a comeback now. If you give in and let yourself pass out, it will be quick and painless. I do hope you accept ''this kind advice I am offering you''.”

“No chance of a comeback? You have a pretty poor opinion of your fellow Transcendents.”

Someone else interrupted.

They didn’t throw a punch or a kick and they didn’t send out a beam of light or a shockwave.

Nevertheless.

“Bh?”

The next body to squirm wasn’t Kamijou’s. Transcendent Aradia had been trying to crush a full human’s worth of weight with her arms, but now Kamijou felt an irregular tremor coming from her.

(What the hell?)

Again, there was no obvious injury.

The only thing he noticed was…

(''Goose bumps?'' But what is she so afraid of? Or is she feeling sick and nauseous? Yes, like from a crawling sensation along her skin.)

“Jgbwh!?”

It was like she couldn’t help herself.

Her seeming invincibility had vanished. She weakly shoved Kamijou away from her with her palms and then staggered back. No, she failed to do even that and collapsed to the filthy tile floor. Her legs lay weakly below her while she covered her mouth with a hand. Her face was pale. And not just her cheeks and forehead. The lips visible between her fingers were as well.

The Bologna Succubus stepped over the broken wall to reenter the spa. She used her spread wings and her tail to prop herself up like a tripod or a crutch, but she had a grin on her exhausted face.

She still made no attempt to cover up her underwear with rose thorn decorations.

“My Cold Mistress spell is nothing like your Rule of Three magic, but that’s why you’re helpless against it, isn’t it? After all, if used right, this could make me the only Transcendent in the cabal who could ''fight back against Alice''!!”

“Ba…lo…gna!?”

“And the cat’s out of the bag now that you’ve experienced it, so there’s no point in hiding what it does. …Here’s a history lesson for you, my pure boy. During the Inquisition so long ago, there were quite a few sinners who claimed to have slept with an incubus or a succubus. Of course, these were confessions extracted with torture. Still, their recorded confessions generally come in one of two flavors. Either it provided pleasure too great to be of this world or it was painful, cold, and disgusting.”

“…”

“Cold Mistress ''is a spell that replaces any and all pleasure signals with pain.'' The desires for food, sex, and sleep are all instructions meant to efficiently guide people toward survival and reproduction through their attempts to fulfill those animal desires. My magic turns that on its head. All pleasure is converted into pain, so I can easily kill anyone through starvation or sleep deprivation. And I’m sure you know what happens if everyone in the world stops having sex.”

Was that why?

Victory had been within reach, so Aradia would have been awash with the pleasure of achieving her goal. And all of that had been flipped around and replaced by the greatest agony. The greater someone’s happiness, the greater the hell the Bologna Succubus could condemn them to.

Aradia’s ability to intentionally misuse good deeds and kindness was horrific itself, but the Bologna Succubus’s magic carried the sweet scent of the profane.

Both the witch and the demon would never be known as good people no matter how great their deeds were.

“Bh.”

Nevertheless, Aradia slowly stood back up with her legs trembling below her. Her face was pale and her shoulders were slanted, but she had not lost her will to fight.

She was the goddess of all witches.

No matter how twisted her methods, the weight she carried may have been very real.

“I will save the witches who continue to suffer around the world. No matter what it takes.”

“I have no issue there.”

“So I will kill this dangerous boy who could lead Alice to destroy the world. It does not matter if he intends it or not. The fact remains that he could very well direct that innocent tyrant in the wrong direction. So he cannot be allowed to survive.”

“That is where our views differ. The real threat is Alice, not Kamijou Touma. No matter what he might think himself, he is no more than the kind of ordinary high school boy you can find anywhere. Thus, you are attacking him over a false accusation.” The usual flightiness in the winged demon’s voice was gone. “And I am the Bologna Succubus, the demoness who appears in the story of a death sentence handed down over history’s most absurd charge: running a brothel full of wanton succubi. This is no April Fools joke – someone actually died over it. Thus, ''my purpose in life is to protect the reputation of the falsely accused.'' I can never bring myself to overlook your barbaric and deadly false accusations here. Even if it means battling a fellow cabal member.”

“Ah…”

As unsteady as she was, Aradia glared at the boy.

No matter what, he was her actual target here.

“Aradia, my goal overlaps with yours some. If you would calm down and recall the absurd excuses for a trial that brought such hell to so many witches long ago, perhaps you could have become the benevolent goddess of the peaceful night who would actively shield Kamijou Touma from these very accusations. …Boy, I will assist you here, but if you wish to survive, you will need to settle this with your own fist.”

“Grahhhhhhhhh!!!!!” roared the goddess.

Kamijou took a step forward at the same moment.

Maybe Aradia’s intimidation was actually directed at the contradiction within herself rather than at someone as puny as Kamijou. She was telling that voice in her head to shut up and just let her mind break apart if that was what it took. In the face of that self-loathing, she chose to instead become an empty shell that continues to save the witches who rely on her.

Aradia’s bestial fingers started to cross with Kamijou Touma’s right fist.

But even under the effects of the Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress, the witch goddess carried the greater weight on her shoulders. She clenched her teeth, ignored the extreme pain, transformed herself into a wicked being for selfless reasons, and took careful aim.

She did not bother blocking the fist.

Even if his fist found her jaw, her nails would slice right through his torso. And if she could power through all the pain, then there would be no convenient accident to save him. If nothing else shook her even further, the vast gap in power between a high school boy and a Transcendent would become all too apparent.

However.

“''Gotten used to the pain yet,'' you masochist witch?”

“Gah!!!???”

A tremor ran through Aradia’s body.

Kamijou could guess what had happened. The Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress spell converted all pleasure signals into pain. With hunger, lust, drowsiness, and all other desires sealed off by that pain, any human or other lifeform would be trapped.

To take that step forward and continue to fight for the witches, Aradia had needed to accept so much pain it led people to reject the very act of living.

So what if the Bologna Succubus ''switched off'' that magic at the last second?

This didn’t shake her in the way the pain did by stealing away her concentration. The twisted agony vanished and all the pleasure and joy she should have been feeling came rushing back into her mind at once, so she found herself unable to control her emotions.

It only created less than a second of lag, but that was enough for Kamijou’s fist to catch up.

Kamijou Touma’s fist smashed through her approaching fingers and slammed dead center into her face.

===Part 7===

With a dull thud, Aradia crashed to the wet tile floor with her long silver hair and giant wimple spread out around her.

Kamijou Touma remained standing.

He was out of breath and covered in aches and pains, but he was still on his feet.

He kicked a small piece of concrete on the floor so it hit Aradia’s arm, but she didn’t noticeably react.

At long last, Kamijou Touma brushed a hand through his wet bangs.

“Phew.”

“No!! Do not let your guard down, boy!”

He tensed at the Bologna Succubus’s shout.

“Aradia is a stubborn one, so you need to punch her again and tie her up or whatever it takes. We can’t give her another chance at this, so if she manages to escape- gh!?”

She made a weird sound, so he spun around to find that seemingly invincible woman collapsing to the side. No, the pink wings and tail she was using to prop herself up like a tripod or crutch had given out. She couldn’t get her hand on the nearby wall, so she crashed down to the filthy tile floor.

And face down at that.

She had her mouth in the gray dust-filled bathwater, but there wasn’t a single twitch of movement from the hair spread out on top of her.

That reminded him of a question that had occurred to him earlier.

The Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress rejected all desire by replacing the pleasure signals with pain. That did sound powerful enough to singlehandedly fight against the entire magic side. But at the same time, it did nothing to defend against enemy attacks. So how had that demon defended herself from Aradia’s attack after using the gas explosion to power her Rule of Three magic?

''Had she'' defended herself?

“Hey!!”

Kamijou had misinterpreted what exactly a Transcendent was. Alice probably shouldn’t have been the first one he saw. He had ended up applying her extraordinary standards to the others as well.

The Bologna Succubus was a Transcendent, but what if ''she could still get injured and bleed like any human?'' If so, why had she gone so far to protect a complete stranger like Kamijou!? Why had she risked her life to leave herself exposed to a gas explosion and then take Aradia’s attack head on!?

“Listen. Gh, you need to deliver the finishing blow to Aradia! Cough, cough. Grlhwfy- let her escape and you may not have another chance at this.”

Kamijou looked alternately between Aradia and the Bologna Succubus.

But there was only one real answer.

The floor was soaked and people could drown in a puddle if they were too weak to get up. Plus, that demoness might as well have been hit by a car, so he had no idea what her condition was like on the inside.

He didn’t even have to think about it.

“''Bologna Succubus''!!”

“Are you daft?”

The injured demoness cursed under her breath when she saw the boy running her way, but he thought he noticed a slight smile on her face. She might complain about his decision, but she must have been in serious need of help.

Aradia had vanished from the floor.

Had she escaped outside through the broken wall? If so, she would treat her wounds and prepare to take Kamijou’s life again. But that was fine with him. As long as he could assist the Bologna Succubus now. Because she had no reason to even be here. If she had given up on Kamijou’s life, she never would have had to fight anyone. But after seeing a stranger being attacked over ''false accusations'', she had felt compelled to travel all the way to Shibuya, Japan, and stand in her fellow cabal member’s way.

He couldn’t let someone with such a good heart die.

He could never live with himself if he did.

He picked her up from the wet tile floor and lent her his shoulder. He clenched his teeth at how weirdly soft her limp form felt.

“Listen, Bologna Succubus. We need to get away from here for now. I can’t lay you down and treat your wound in this damp hot spa.”

“Aradia will be…back soon.”

“I understand that.”

“No, you really don’t.”

She was weak, but she got her words out clearly.

She was very obviously displeased with his decision.

But not because she was letting her emotions get the better of her.

That kindhearted demon knew harshly scolding him would improve his odds of survival even a little, so it was a show put on for his benefit.

She was the Cold Mistress, a scorned being who brought a painful death to everyone she held in her embrace. Or that was the claim made by all the “educated” people talking about her behind her back.

Kamijou thought they could all go to hell.

“Aradia has her own pride as a Transcendent of the Bridge Builders Cabal. The two of us have left that pride in tatters. Both her pride in her combat abilities and in her ideology. Yet we failed to deliver the finishing blow to truly end this conflict. We cannot expect her to hold anything back now. She will pull out all the stops next time. Witch Goddess Aradia really will tear apart Shibuya and the rest of Tokyo – which includes Academy City – in order to kill you and you alone. And you will die for good next time.”

She might show exasperation, she might criticize his decisions, she might tease him, and she might insult him, but the Bologna Succubus never once attempted to abandon Kamijou. She had lost the only pathway to victory she could think of, but she was still determined to fight alongside him to protect him.

She was worried for him, so she couldn’t bring herself to abandon this complete stranger.

That was the only reason.

His newfound understanding of that allowed him to detect the feelings packed into the core of her rebuke.

“That was our one and only chance to peacefully end this battle against Aradia, but you threw it out. That was the worst decision you could have made. Ugh, and I too am a magician of the Bridge Builders Cabal, remember? I am one of the Transcendents attempting to change the world to fit my personal ideal and I am sure we would find ourselves in conflict over how to deal with Alice. So you should have let your future enemy die- ksh- and dealt with Aradia!”

“Shut up,” he bluntly cut in.

Each and every member of that extreme cabal supposedly rivaled the entire magic side. To Aradia and the Bologna Succubus, Kamijou Touma probably was a truly puny being. Whether they wanted to kill him or protect him, they simply expected to have their way there, so his fate wasn’t in his own hands here.

But he said it anyway.

If she intended to stab him in the back, she should have kept her mouth shut, but that kindhearted magician had openly called herself his enemy.

So he spoke plainly to the woman who had selflessly saved his life.

“Do you really think I could have done that?”

Transcendent Aradia would be back. And soon.

But he wanted to be the kind of person who wouldn’t even hesitate to say he had made the right decision here.

===Between the Lines 1===

The two of them walked through the automatic door, fully ignoring the “no pets allowed” sticker on the tempered glass.

That door led into the Miyashita Ark, a large shopping mall in Shibuya.

A golden retriever stuck his tongue out next to a blonde woman in a beige habit.

“The place is deserted.”

“Not surprising after a commotion like that. We’re talking about a battle between two Transcendents here. Even the ''guards'' fled for their lives.”

A dull clattering sound came from the two stuffed duffel bags the human was carrying.

Aleister, the magician who had hijacked Great Demon Coronzon’s body, showed no hesitation in his gait. There were more than 90 small shops in the mall, but he led the golden retriever straight to a multinational restaurant.

He viewed the photo of French ramen with shrimp and cheese and a toxic neon orange soup displayed on a poster that would provide further information on your phone.

“This half-assed campaign is challenging people to eat an XXL serving of ramen, but the best dish they make is the fish & chips. And that’s coming from someone who was born in England and eventually came to hate the place, so you know it has to be good.”

“So is the multinational thing ''a bluff'' and it’s actually an English restaurant?”

“Oh, the entire restaurant is a front,” he casually responded on his way inside.

There was no one inside the restaurant either. Which was perfect. Aleister wouldn’t shy away from bloodshed, but he would prefer to avoid wasting perfectly good food.

“Now this is a surprise,” he said. “This really is convenient.”

“Is it really that much help? You had already checked the place out, hadn’t you?”

“Even so. ''They'' are generally a group of wandering treasure keepers who don’t even give their group a name to keep people from tracking them. It is highly unusual for them to stay in one place for so long. A restaurant isn’t the only place you find largescale refrigeration equipment: labs, factories, harbor warehouses, refrigerated trucks, cargo ships, wood dryers, and so on. So they can change their disguise as often as necessary.”

“But why would they run away? Even if these treasures are small enough to carry with you, that seems like all the more reason they would stay here and defend them with their lives.”

“The people onsite don’t even know what they’re storing, so why would they throw away their lives away for it? Ha ha. For once, the extreme information restrictions set in place by their central group has come back to bite them.”

They crossed the deserted restaurant to the very back.

The vibe given off by the wallpaper and lighting changed once they were inside the professional kitchen. It was all cold fluorescent lights and sterile tile. Aleister found this more comfortable. The large silver countertop was so systematically organized it was reminiscent of a hospital’s autopsy table. It was hard to imagine any food prepared here making a pleasant meal that put a smile on people’s faces.

This was the place’s true face.

By adding on more and more camouflage to keep this icy atmosphere from escaping the confines of the tiled space, a popular restaurant had eventually formed.

“''They'' were originally an organization tasked with eternally preserving the remains of holy men and women deep in the snowy British mountains. Of course, these people couldn’t come back to life and disappear like the Son of God. They were a little more grounded.”

“Eternally preserved corpses? I occasionally hear that legend from the former Soviet Union, but it looks to me like they just froze their dead people. That does not qualify as preservation on the microscopic level. The cells will be constantly breaking down.”

“That doesn’t really matter to them. I know you haven’t lost your love of romance in your old age, so would you be interested in seeing Robin Hood’s corpse? What about Jack the Ripper’s? That’s the kind of person ''they'' now specialize in preserving. But the death of someone that charismatic can be a powerful thing. A nearly eternal amount of time is needed to soften the blow and lessen the people’s sorrow.”

“You know an awful lot about this.”

“I dabbled in the topic ''in relation to the previous Imagine Breaker.'' Although that was something the Golden cabal stole and modified for their own purposes.”

Aleister was referencing the weapon stored in a certain armory that he had used to deliver the finishing blow to Mathers.

But he also hung his head for some reason.

“And back in 1947, I was very nearly made a part of ''their'' collection. And I only avoided that fate because that perfectionist of a doctor put me in ''too perfect'' a state of suspended animation.”

Several pieces of industrial equipment were lined up by the wall. No ordinary home would have one so large or one that only had a freezer with no refrigerator.

There were seven in all and Aleister stopped in front of the fifth one.

“But not even a group dedicated to preservation can do so indefinitely. It became clear that all forms of sanctuary were being ransacked during World War Two.”

Aleister lowered his two duffel bags to the tile floor.

“So the occult sphere was so ''overwhelmed by anxiety'' that some British witches even performed a strange cursing ritual in the nude until some of them froze to death. British witches fighting the approaching German army with curses sounds like something from a B-movie, but it was very real.”

“So this group needed to evacuate their ‘treasures’?”

“Ever since, their most dangerous stash has only ever been kept in temporary locations. Because that war taught them that the national borders are not a trustworthy defense. If you want to hide something, you spread it around and constantly move it around instead of keeping it all in a single secure building. Heh heh. The Miyashita Ark, huh? ''They'' claim to be travelers, but I get the feeling ''they'' were the ones behind the opening of this new shopping mall. If I missed them here, it might have been decades before I tracked them down again.”

He used both hands to fling open the doors to a refrigerator larger than a drink vending machine.

A white chill pushed out at him.

At first glance, it only looked like it contained frozen blocks of shrimp soup, a curry separated into frozen blocks of meat and a frozen paste, and other restaurant food. If a chef who didn’t know the truth happened to open the door, they would likely find nothing amiss. But after moving that camouflage out of the way, Aleister spotted the true prize found in the very back.

He saw a 49kg mass measuring about 150cm long.

A modern preserved corpse was wrapped in several layers of plastic wrap and coated with a layer of frost.

“Found her.”

“So do we now make a swift withdrawal?”

“I would love to, but I am not lugging 49kg of frozen corpse home with me.”

“Sigh. You’re getting old, Aleister.”

“I think I’m doing pretty good for someone born in 1875.”

Meanwhile, Aleister pulled out the solidly frozen mass (using the great demon’s youthful body). He laid it on the silver countertop with a dull thud.

Then he unzipped the heavy bags he had placed on the floor. They contained a roll of thick plastic sheets, ethanol disinfectant in a spray bottle, and a UV light so powerful direct exposure to the skin would be dangerous.

By disinfecting the entire space – including floor, walls, and ceiling – and forcing the air to swell out from within, he could create an isolated space on the same level as an emergency operating room during a disaster or a field hospital on the battlefield.

Next, he pulled out some precision equipment nicer than anything found inside a smartphone and lined it up on the countertop.

“So I’m at least going to fiddle with the contents before taking her back to my lab. That way she can walk back herself – no carrying necessary.”

“With battery power?”

“Wireless power. Fueling the human body with the nutrients found in their food is terribly inefficient, really. We live in a more ecofriendly world now, so let’s turn this legendary magician into a sustainable something-or-other.”

The golden retriever pulled out a cigar, but Aleister snatched it away. The thorough sterilization of the room would be meaningless with the dog puffing away on that.

The dog looked upset, but started chewing on the bone-shaped gum he was given instead.

“So this is a ‘she’ to you? Sounds like you think this corpse still has a personality.”

“This is all a waste of time if I can’t ''rebuild her'' that way.”

Aleister sounded so casual as he turned to face the 150cm mass.

And the human who created the very concept of the science side spoke to it.

“Rise and shine, Anna Kingsford, our true starting point.”

<noinclude>
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Toaru Majutsu no Index: Genesis Testament

2025-02-20T04:36:51Z

Churronzon: added cover

{{Status|Active}}

{{Toaru:Brief}}

'''<big><big><span style="color:green">This page is for the third series of Toaru Majutsu no Index.</span> [[Toaru Majutsu no Index|Click here for the <u>''first''</u> series.]] | [[Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament|Click here for the <u>''second''</u> series.]] <span style="color:red"><big>***</big></span></big></big>'''

==Alternative Languages==
The ''Toaru Majutsu no Index'' series is also available in the following languages:
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index (Indonesia)|Toaru Majutsu no Index ~ Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index ~ Russian:NT|Toaru Majutsu no Index ~ Русский (Russian)]]
*[[To Aru Majutsu no Index ~ (Spanish)|Toaru Majutsu no Index ~ Español (Spanish)]]
*[[To Aru Majutsu no Index ~ Deutsch (German)|Toaru Majutsu no Index ~ Deutsch (German)]]
*[[To Aru Majutsu no Index ~ Italiano (Italian)|Toaru Majutsu no Index ~ Italiano (Italian)]]
*[[To Aru Majutsu no Index Polski|Toaru Majutsu no Index ~ Polski (Polish)]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index - Français|Toaru Majutsu no Index ~ Français (French)]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index ~Brazilian Portuguese~|Toaru Majutsu no Index ~ Português Brasileiro (Brazilian Portuguese)]]

(Note: Translation progress varies for each version.)
----
Visit the [http://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/index.php Baka-Tsuki Project Forum] to discuss this series and other information from Baka-Tsuki.

==Story Synopsis==


<big>''This series is a direct sequel and continuation of '''[[Toaru Majutsu no Index]]''' and '''[[Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament]]'''.''</big>

Science and magic exist side by side in this world.

This is the peak of the science side with a curriculum for espers, Academy City. In this city where 80% of the population are students, the season has finally come when all residents are excited and fidgety!

It's Christmas Eve.

Amidst the city showing a cheerful hustle and bustle, ordinary boy who can’t keep up with school, Kamijou Touma, also doesn’t intend to miss this event! He was hard at work in his supplementary lessons...

A backward glance from the default misfortune-prone bastard, the silver-haired sister freeloading in his dormitory, Index, in the heart pounding scene different from the usual, activates a new gluton skill!? While Kamijou tries to desperately stop that, Misaka Mikoto taken in by the Christmas Eve atmosphere appears before him.

==Awards==

{{Toaru:Awards}}

==Translation==
'''Translators Needed'''

If you would like to help translate this series, please post in the forums [http://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=3505 here], and we will help you get started. Thank you.

===Registration===

Those who wish to contribute are asked to notify a supervisor beforehand.

Translators are asked to <big>'''<u>[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Registration Page|register]]</u>'''</big> which chapters they're working on.

===Format Standards===
'''Every edited chapter must conform to not only the general format guidelines, but also this project's own guidelines.'''
*[[Format_guideline|General Format/Style Guideline]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Names and Terminology Guideline|Project-Specific Guidelines: Format, Names, and Terminology]]

'''All edited translations are to be in American English.'''

==Updates==

{{Toaru:Updates}}

==Terminologies==

All terminologies, character information, and other series details are hosted on [http://toarumajutsunoindex.wikia.com/wiki/Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index_Wiki this wiki].

{{Toaru:Mtoggle:GT}}

==The '''''Toaru Majutsu no Index: Genesis Testament''''' series by Kazuma Kamachi==


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Genesis mw-customtoggle-GenesisClose mw-customtoggle-GenesisOpen" style="background:#f2e0ce;cursor:pointer" align="center">'''<big>Genesis Testament</big>'''</div>
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===GT Volume 1 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume1|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume1 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume1 Prologue|Prologue: At an Early Christmas Eve Intersection — Prepare_for_Xmas_Eve!]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume1 Chapter1|Chapter 1: Just Like an Amusement Park — Red_Wear,Big_Bag,and_Flying_Sledge.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume1 Chapter2|Chapter 2: A Changing Academy City, the Night Before — the_24th,Showdown.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume1 Chapter3|Chapter 3: A Dark Conspiracy and a Barrier Gone — Enemy_Use_XXX.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume1 Chapter4|Chapter 4: Interaction with Another World, the Starting Point — “R&C OCCULTICS Co.Ltd.”]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume1 Epilogue|Epilogue: Snow and Crimson Cover All — White_End.(and_Merry_Xmas!!)]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume1 Afterword|Afterword]]

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===GT Volume 2 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Prologue|Prologue: The Bloody Christmas Begins — 12/24_to_12/25.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Chapter1|Chapter 1: This is the Real Battle — Home_Ground_Hospital.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Chapter2|Chapter 2: Black Pill, White Snow — and_RED_Rose.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Chapter3|Chapter 3: In the Void of Zero — Contact_6.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Chapter4|Chapter 4: The Phenomenon of Kamijou Touma — Not_Right_Hand.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Epilogue|Epilogue: Greeting Through the Bars — Matching_Complete.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Afterword|Afterword]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume2 Ending|?]]

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===GT Volume 3 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume3|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume3 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume3 Prologue|Prologue: Look What Under I Found Under This Big Rock — OP.“Hand_Cuffs”]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume3 Chapter1|Chapter 1: A Scab Torn Away — City_Warfare.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume3 Chapter2|Chapter 2: Dark Side — Ghost, Android, and…]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume3 Chapter3|Chapter 3: Academy City’s Greatest Taboo — Safety_Zero, Control_Free.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume3 Chapter4|Chapter 4: The Demon Lord’s Young — the_LIGHT.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume3 Epilogue|Epilogue: Cry of a Newborn Darkness — Over_the_C. Point, Now.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume3 Afterword|Afterword]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume3 Ending|?]]

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===GT Volume 4 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume4|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume4 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume4 Prologue|Prologue: A Picture Book that Slipped through the Cracks – Magic_Side,Open.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume4 Chapter1|Chapter 1: The Full Population of Los Angeles is Missing – 26_the_West_Coast_Warfare.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume4 Chapter2|Chapter 2: Suspected and Alone – Los_Angeles.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume4 Chapter3|Chapter 3: The Counterattack Begins – Boy_not_“Dark”.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume4 Chapter4|Chapter 4: Beyond the Two Choices – Duel_Against_R∴C∴O∴(for_Save_Mother).]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume4 Epilogue|Epilogue: That Human Returns – Science_Side,Interrupt.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume4 Afterword|Afterword]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume4 Ending|?]]

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===GT Volume 5 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume5|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume5 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume5 Prologue|Prologue: Visitor from Picture Book Land – Girl_Name_is_“ALICE”.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume5 Chapter1|Chapter 1: A Year Ending, a Wallet Emptying, a Struggle Ensuing – Winter_Vacation.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume5 Chapter2|Chapter 2: The Rescue Puzzle Sits Before You – Travel.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume5 Chapter3|Chapter 3: Welcome to a World Without the Goddess’ Protection – Difficulty_the_ABYSS.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume5 Chapter4|Chapter 4: If Someone Remains to be Saved – Final_Exams_“Handcuffs”.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume5 Epilogue|Epilogue: Even If Your Hand Leaves Mine – Not_Enemy.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume5 Afterword|Afterword]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume5 Ending|?]]

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===GT Volume 6 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume6|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume6 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume6 Prologue|Prologue: You Lose Less Weight Than You Would Think – Dying_Hungry.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume6 Chapter1|Chapter 1: Go Get That New Year’s Eve Job – Away_SHIBUYA,31.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume6 Chapter2|Chapter 2: Goddess of the Night, the Moon, and Witches – “ARADIA”x03.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume6 Chapter3|Chapter 3: The Transcendent Blossoms – Sabbat_VS_Witch_Hunt.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume6 Chapter4|Chapter 4: What’s Wrong With Being Only Human? – Save_the_Stray_Devil.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume6 Epilogue|Epilogue: The Record Needle Skips – Irregular_Counter.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume6 Afterword|Afterword]]

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===GT Volume 7 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume7|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume7 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume7 Prologue|Prologue: Capture the Powerful Witch – Happy? New_Year!!]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume7 Chapter1|Chapter 1: Happy New Hell, Another Year of Panic – KOTATSU_Syndrome.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume7 Chapter2|Chapter 2: Which of Them was Caught? – the_Consulate.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume7 Chapter3|Chapter 3: The Next Move – Witch_Trial.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume7 Chapter4|Chapter 4: Hear the Name of Thy Ruin, World – Call_"XXXXX".]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume7 Epilogue|Epilogue: Saving Her is Unconditional – Join_to…?]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume7 Afterword|Afterword]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume7 Ending|?]]

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===GT Volume 8 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume8|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume8 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume8 Prologue|Prologue: Attacked from Three Sides – Proclaim_ML.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume8 Chapter1|Chapter 1: I’m Sick of Running – Break_Through_MCV.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume8 Chapter2|Chapter 2: Transcendent Mut Thebes – The_Death_Penalty_WH.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume8 Chapter3|Chapter 3: Relying on R&C Occultics – Secret_DB.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume8 Chapter4|Chapter 4: Decide For Yourself Which Girl to Save – Battle_of_HsB-AD-CVA01.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume8 Epilogue|Epilogue: Beyond Optimism – Catastrophe_XXX.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume8 Afterword|Afterword]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume8 Ending|?]]

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===GT Volume 9 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume9|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume9 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume9 Prologue|Prologue: Battle of the Best – Zenith_of_the_Magic.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume9 Chapter1|Chapter 1: Determine Your Stance – Right_or_Wicked.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume9 Chapter2|Chapter 2: So Much Like Tree Rings – Open_War,1st_Defense_Line.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume9 Chapter3|Chapter 3: Journey – Cut_a_Road_to_Allover_the_Goal.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume9 Chapter4|Chapter 4: At the Center – Duel_and_Struggle,CRC.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume9 Epilogue|Epilogue: A Certain Truth and the Collapse of It All – Black_Humor.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume9 Afterword|Afterword]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume9 Ending|?]]

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===GT Volume 10 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Prologue|Prologue: Alice Anotherbible – Back_to_Memory.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Chapter1|Chapter 1: The World is Not So Strong – the_End_of_Real.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Chapter2|Chapter 2: Welcome to the Psychedelic – Little_Queen_Wonderland.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Chapter3|Chapter 3: Prophecy – Last_Branch(of_Die).]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Chapter4|Chapter 4: The Unfortunate Boy’s Focus – Over_the_River.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Epilogue|Epilogue: Kamijou Touma – Notice_of_the_Death.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Afterword|Afterword]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Ending|?]]

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===GT Volume 11 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume11|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume11 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume11 Prologue|Prologue: Welcome – the_DIE_After_Tomorrow.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume11 Chapter1|Chapter 1: The Other Side of the Ordinary – Hell,_Hades,_and_Gehenna.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume11 Chapter2|Chapter 2: Journey – What’s_That_Adventurer’s_Party?]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume11 Chapter3|Chapter 3: A Single Lie, A Single Answer – Seat_the_Only_One.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume11 Chapter4|Chapter 4: I’d Wanted To Do This With You – Duel_and_Struggle,_XXX.Revenge.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume11 Epilogue|Epilogue: End of the Ritual – Flat_Line…]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume11 Afterword|Afterword]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume11 Ending|?]]

[[#toc|'''<small>Back to Contents</small>''']]
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==Side Stories==

{{Toaru:Side Stories}}

==Official Parody Stories==

{{Toaru:Parodies}}

==Story Calendar==

{{Toaru:Calendar}}

==Project Staff==

*Supervisor: ''None Designated''
*Project Manager: '''[[User:OH&S|OH&S]]'''

===Translators===
'''ACTIVE'''
:*'''[[User:Js06|Js06]]'''

===Editors===

'''All editors that can speak and write English proficiently are welcome.'''
:*''Editors list has been cleaned due to inactive editors. Editors are welcome to add their names again if they are still editing or proofreading.''--[[User:OH&S|OH&S]] ([[User talk:OH&S|talk]]) 11:44, 11 April 2017 (CEST)

==Series Overview==

{{Toaru:Series Overview}}

==More Information==
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index The wikipedia article]
*[http://www12.atwiki.jp/index-index/ とある魔術の禁書目録　Index] (日本語、そしてネタバレの危険性がある！)
*[http://toarumajutsunoindex.wikia.com/wiki/Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index_Wiki Toaru Majutsu no Index Wikia]
*[http://r-s.sakura.ne.jp/w/i_m.htm Kiyotaka Haimura website]

[[Category:Light novel (English)]]
[[Category:Dengeki Bunko]]
[[Category:Kazuma Kamachi]]

[[Category:Genre - Action]]
[[Category:Genre - Comedy]]
[[Category:Genre - Fantasy]]
[[Category:Genre - Harem]]
[[Category:Genre - Sci-Fi]]
[[Category:Genre - Supernatural]]

Toaru Majutsu no Index:GoldenSS

2025-02-20T04:23:12Z

Churronzon: /* Genesis Testament – A Certain Magical Index SS */ added cover

==Genesis Testament – A Certain Magical Index SS==
[[Image:GoldenSS_cover.png|thumb]]

It was the late 19th century.

The Isis-Urania Temple was located in a corner of the British capital of London. Or an apartment that went by that name was.

This is the story of the era before Aleister came knocking at that door. The story of, in some ways, a more peaceful time.

Mina could be succinctly described as a diligent and sheltered young lady who was therefore easily deceived.

Annie Elizabeth Fredericka Horniman had always seen it that way.

That was, in fact, Annie’s impetus for joining the Golden cabal.

She was worried about Mina.

She couldn’t let that clueless girl get anywhere near the topics of Asian teas or New World harbor construction. She would undoubtedly fall prey to some get-rich-quick scam. She deserved to live a life free of those uglier parts of the world. Taking over the family business could fall to her older brother who loved all that complicated stuff while Mina married someone she truly loved. No, she didn’t even need to marry. ''She should just forget matters of gender and choose to spend her life with me instea-

“Mina, do you take Mathers to be your lawfully wedded husband and accept the new name of Mina Mathers?”

“I do. I am overjoyed that all of you in the Golden cabal would hold this ceremony for us.”

…

Annie puffed her cheeks out all on her own. She was also a bit teary-eyed.

A wonderfully blissful scene played out before her eyes.

(…)

It was dazzling. The light was so bright she thought it would kill her. At this point, she wished she could just turn into a slug.

(I didn’t join the cabal to hand my cute Mina over to that sketchy man!!)

William Wynn Westcott sternly read through the newspaper.

He was one of the three founders of the Golden cabal.

“Jack the Ripper, huh?”

That was also happening at this time. The gruesome serial killings had greatly stimulated the people’s baser emotions, but they ironically also helped ring the alarm about the British Empire’s stratified society. They proved that poverty and fear existed even in the country praised as the top of the world.

Jack the Ripper’s aims were of course unknown.

Psychology was still in its infancy, so they would have a hard time working out his identity.

“It’s sad, really. This has caused such an uproar, yet the famous Scotland Yard has no leads on a culprit. Even this article is only taking about it like it’s a thing of the past when the killer might still be walking these streets with us.”

Whatever his purpose, the explosive power of the killer’s wicked mind had shaken the public as he worked toward achieving it. He had created a colossal social phenomenon well beyond anything a single criminal was capable of. To put it in Golden terms, he was a dangerous creature who specialized in harnessing Qliphothic forces. The sooner he was caught, the better.

The Isis-Urania Temple – or the apartment that bore that name – was yet again thick with the scent of cheap oil burning. The lamp on the table had no deep meaning related to ancient Egypt or the rose and the cross – it was simply a way to cut down on operating costs. They wanted to pay as little as possible for electricity and other utilities.

The Lady of the Masquerade Ball, who wore a gaudy red party dress and kept her mask on even in the cabal’s secret base, lounged on the sofa and puffed on a long, skinny pipe. Her other hand held a brandy glass. It was still morning, but she had gone for a double. This was the side of the famous actress she kept hidden from the audience. The smooth mask had no eyes or mouth, yet the end of pipe and the edge of the glass somehow passed through. Almost like the mask itself were made of smoke or liquid.

She gained a Lilith-like glow when inebriated and she spoke while lying on the sofa like a feline beast.

“Oh? Mr. Coroner, I didn’t realize you were assigned to East End.”

“I’m not, which is why it’s so frustrating. I would get it if this was some one-man war against the wealthy or against the soldiers laying waste to the colonies, but he’s only targeting women who sell their bodies. They’re in a precarious enough position as it is, so this is absolutely unforgivable. How does getting rid of them improve the country? He must not understand the structural problems that force those women into that line of business in the first place.”

As you can see, Westcott had a generous and caring heart, had social status, liked detailed work, and had a ton of friends and acquaintances. His serious nature did lead to some awkwardness, such as bringing up the reasons women might sell their bodies when speaking to a young woman, but he had some ineffable quality that led those around him to only laugh and forgive him.

Simply put, he was made of charisma.

Without him, the collection of eccentrics that was the Golden cabal would have fallen apart before it got off the ground.

“Will this do, Annie?”

“If this were my theatre, I would want to place a crane on the ceiling.”

“Hee hee. We are still in the planning phase, you know?”

They were discussing the catacombs…which was a special room where only the VIP magicians would perform ceremonies.

However, they didn’t actually have to grab a shovel and dig out an underground space. “Catacombs” was only a name. They would be making it collapsible so it could even be transferred if they had to move locations.

Knowing this was the wold’s largest magic cabal’s ceremonial ground, one might picture some creepy stone ruins full of skeletons, like the Paris Catacombs, but instead the walls and floor were painted in primary colors and it was full of symbolic weapons made by attaching powerful magnets to the end of wooden sticks or coating clear glass with blue paint.

The light on the ceiling was electric.

They would use anything available to them. That was the way of things in an age before magic and science were split. Mina had graduated art school, so she gave form to the images in Mathers’s head, but they also had help from Annie and the Lady of the Masquerade Ball.

They created a ceremonial ground that used the logic of stage contraptions.

And this was no school play – those professional performers refused to cut any corners.

The Mathers couple’s home was in Paris, but they were visiting the London temple for this job. Annie couldn’t be more delighted at the chance to spend time with her old friend.

“I may have gotten a little carried away.”

“Oh? Mina, remembering your school days?”

“I made some daring alterations, so I hope the 1st temple in Germany won’t be mad.”

“It should be fine. There’s plenty of occult stories about high-tech things too, like cameras stealing your soul or absorbing your life energy, school anatomy models running around at night, or hearing strange voices on the telephone. And there are plenty of stories of ghosts appearing on the stage too.”

Not only that, but the Golden cabal weren’t the only ones to use a stage performance to boost a mystical ceremony. The Christian pipe organs and choirs wouldn’t have taken that form if someone hadn’t designed it for that purpose.

When a magician donned mythological garb and took the stage, they temporarily cast off the bonds of reality.

Here, they could become the disciples who discovered CRC’s preserved corpse.

“Mina, don’t you want a stage elevator? One of those things that lets an actor – bam! – shoot up from below the floor. Should I bring you the designs?”

“The landlord will cry if we modify the apartment that much.”

Lately, Arthur Edward Waite was the center of attention. In the name of testing out the accuracy of the tarot cards he was prototyping and improving, Edward Berridge, John William Brodie-Innes, and others would often gather around the table together. That Waite didn’t realize things were only running so smoothly because of Westcott’s assistance showed it would be some time before he caught up to the founder.

Waite was currently interpreting the card Mina had turned over. Westcott would respect his independence but provide a subtle hint if he ever ran into trouble.

“The obvious interpretation would be the lunar forces: dreams, fantasies, and the occult in general. The Hanged Man next to it refers to another plane of existence. In this case, perhaps the astral plane. And this card refers to a woman. Since it’s the High Priestess, probably one younger than yourself. Like a younger colleague or sister.”

“My.”

“But, madam, this Tower card worries me. It says to watch out for an apprentice. Destruction, disgrace…this may mean you will get into a fight later on. But the combination of another phase and a fight is an odd one.”

“Mina!!”

The door burst open and Mathers entered.

The idiot who stood out even among those eccentrics raised his voice.

“What is the meaning of this? I hate to say it, but you must be possessed by an evil spirit. How else do you explain this horrendous lack of red? I can’t bear to see it. The deplorable state of the eggs on this plate tells me the 5th sphere of Gevurah – that is the power of Mars – is weakening!!”

“Oh, dear, honey. I forgot you will only eat a fried egg if it has been cooked on both sides until the yolk is firm.”

“If you’re just going to complain, then make your own damn eeeeeeeggs!”

Why couldn’t that man just ask her to cook the eggs a little more? His dramatics gave Annie a headache.

“Mina, if you keep spoiling that unemployed loser, he’s only going to get worse.”

“But, Annie, nothing is more fun than looking after a husband who is deadly incapable of taking care of himself☆”

“You’ve taken the loving wife routine so far you’ve turned into a downward spirallllll!!!”

Mathers knew how to box and fence, he was fluent in both Latin and Hebrew, and he had mastered numerical codes. He was talented in just about every field, but he was nightmarishly lacking in common sense, cooperation, and the ability to earn money with a hard day’s work. Heaven had blessed him in one way while cursing him in more than one way, so with the exception of Mina and Westcott, he could only speak with people by sandwiching his words between arguments.

Anna Kingsford’s death had been a tragedy.

That expert was said to have been the only person capable of getting Mathers to obey her word and of silencing him with her fist.

If only she had passed on that secret before she died.

Recently, the Lady of the Masquerade Ball had invited a few members of the Golden cabal to form a smaller group of friends.

It was known as The Sphere.

Being the world’s largest magic cabal had its downsides. When enough people were gathered in a single large room, they tended to split into smaller groups.

In terms of the latest fad of psychology, this may have been the result of Thanatos, the mental drive to modify old traditions and organizations.

…And as dramatic as this might sound, this is a phenomenon commonly seen at pub tables.

One day, the great Mathers arrived at the Isis-Urania Temple (which reeked so bad of burnt lamp oil that they all might have died if not for the fireplace chimney).

What he said came out of nowhere.

“I am one of the chosen nobility meant to protect the common people.”

<span style="font-size:125%">“You’re what???”</span>

Sensible Annie’s (ice cold) retort did not lead him to correct himself.

The look in his eyes was concerning. Such a dark look.

His pupils were fully dilated.

''I shouldn’t have reacted,'' realized Annie, regret plain on her face. It was the late 19th century. The ironclad rule of just ignoring troublesome people had yet to be invented.

Besides, she had noticed before that man was doing something off separate from the cabal.

“Really, I can’t believe it took me so long to realize I have noble Highlander blood flowing through my veins. Oh, sorry if I confused you all, but you can rest easy and henceforth refer to me as the Count of Glenstrae!! Yes, show me the honor I am due, commoners!!!”

Nobility? What was this unemployed loser talking about???

…Perhaps his mind hadn’t been able to bear spending such a long time without a job.

But if so, why didn’t he just get a job?

Annie Horniman chose to discuss it with someone who would understand. She tugged on the woman’s clothing.

“Mina, excuse me, Mina, Mina. Um, I believe your husband is mentally worn out, so it would probably be a good idea to send him to some quiet old castle or retreat up in the mountains. Preferably forever.”

“Hee hee. Oh, my. Honey, you have such an active imagination. Look, your dreams and fantasies are dripping out. Do you even need your wife to wipe your mouth off for you, you spoiled thing?”

“Not even this breaks her loving wife routine? But if this gets out, it’ll do some real social damage!”

Annie’s family had made a fortune in the tea trade and she too had a talent for making money. Enough that she would go on to build a large theatre.

So she was the one funding the Mina couple’s lifestyle. Not for unemployed Mathers, but to support her adorable Mina! But if that unemployed loser started ranting about being royalty or nobility in public, it could damage Mina’s reputation, not to mention Annie’s for supporting them!!

Tarot cards had been around for a very long time. The names and the number of cards varied. Arthur Edward Waite must have been dissatisfied with the accuracy of his prototype version with altered numbers and symbols because he toyed with a few of the cards while sipping on a glass of whisky.

“The thing is, Westcott.”

“Hm?”

“I really like you.”

That alone was enough to know what kind of magician he was.

Overall, there were two lines of thinking within the Golden cabal.

But this wasn’t anything as cool as an inner circle and outer circle or a first legion and second legion.

Quite the opposite.

One group wanted to master magic and change the world. The other saw magic as an attractive topic to inspire enjoyable conversation within the group,.

As the world’s largest, the Golden cabal was not lacking in members. Some like Coroner Westcott and Doctor Berridge had official authority and social status. Some like Annie and the Lady of the Masquerade Ball were part of the gaudy world of the performance arts. They also had a few world-famous poets and scriptwriters. Even Mina Mathers was the daughter of the Bergson family (although the gentle wife was unaware of the privilege this brought her). Whatever industry one might be working in, involving oneself in a shared secret wasn’t a bad way to build up connections.

From that worldly viewpoint, Mathers was an exceptionally unattractive person to hold a central position in the cabal.

For him, magic was everything.

Calling him focused or dedicated sounded nice, but that magical genius had next to no official titles. He had no money and no social standing and his frequent bizarre behavior only served to cause a scene. But he wasn’t some mystical person who got by without working. Technically speaking, he did work. Because Annie would find open positions for him. But that never lasted long. He would be unemployed again in no time. And now he was claiming to be a descendant of Scottish nobility.

Westcott’s letters were actually of dubious validity, yet not a single person in the cabal believed Mathers’s bloodline delusions. Because nothing he said could change that he had been born to a middle class London office worker.

His wife Mina kindly went along with it, but there was no way of knowing what she actually thought. Knowing her, she might actually believe him. Then again, she was the daughter of the Bergson family who had thrown out that position by marrying Mathers, so she may not have cared at all about the class system of Queen Victoria’s British Empire.

“I can’t divorce myself from public life to pursue magic to the extent Count Glenstrae has. And I can’t pursue my dreams to the extent his wife does.”

“You shouldn’t compare yourself to them. Not everyone can live that kind of life. They are unusual even for the cabal.”

“It’s the same with these cards. I talk about using them to package or categorize the Sephiroth, but fortune telling is really all about utilitarian benefit, isn’t it? Pence, shillings, pounds… I am nothing more than a silly man who can’t stop thinking about numbers. No matter how hard I try, I doubt I can ever live as a magician like you.”

“Do you feel bad for living a comfortable life?”

“There is a 7=4 who insists any magician who focuses on worldly money is second-rate.”

“That’s just sour grapes over being unemployed.”

Only another 7=4 would openly talk about Mathers that way. And as a skilled magician who also had real social standing, Westcott was a different sort of monster.

Arthur Edward Waite shrank down like he wanted to disappear.

“I’m ashamed of it, but I just can’t stop making money. Once these cards are complete, they will make me a fortune. I am certain they will continue to be produced and sold long after I am dead. They will continue turning a profit until people no longer fear their vague fortunes and futures.”

He was approaching an invention that, in a way, was more incredible than some magic spell, but that didn’t mean he was proud of it.

This hinted at the real meaning behind what he had said.

Westcott and Mathers.

Two of the three founders.

“That’s why I like that the cabal is led by someone who can compromise with the real world.”

“No, no drinking.”

Mathers (who was a drinker but had no money) was despondent.

But Westcott did not back down.

“You can get drunk after we gather our thoughts on the Secret Chiefs. I have discovered and deciphered all of the original code books. You are supposed to create various ceremonies based on them that anyone can read. Wasn’t that the plan?”

The Secret Chiefs were mysterious beings said to grant permission to establish a magic cabal, and everyone had their own ideas about them. Westcott said one could borrow their power by asking a priestess in distant Germany. Mathers said they were incorporeal beings but boasted he could directly contact them. Some magicians even said they were ordinary people who walked on two legs and drank coffee in the city.

Old gentlemanly Westcott sighed.

“If using your head is so displeasing to you, then how about you visit remote Tibet and search for the Secret Chiefs in the physical world? Do that and I will buy you as much Scotch as you can drink.”

“Sh, shh!!” shushed Doctor Berridge, hastily raising his left index finger to his lips.

Only Westcott, who was on the same level as Mathers, could make jokes like that in the Golden cabal. In this age, magicians believed they would receive unfathomable wisdom and power if they made the long journey to Tibet, but Mathers loathed the way some people would throw out study and logic in order to rely on the “Mysterious East”.

“I say we forget about some single concept like the Secret Chiefs and instead study means of reaching and toying with the higher plane as a whole.”

“Either way, this isn’t a subject you can discuss over drinks. Besides, a drink is a reward for someone who has completed a day’s work. Now, Mathers, I will use your least favorite phrase in the entire world: get to work.”

Doctor Berridge stared at Westcott, plainly wanting to say something.

The priestess named Anna Sprengel was a mysterious figure who only ever appeared in Westcott’s letters. No one had ever actually seen her.

More than a friend of a friend, she was like that friend of a friend’s teacher.

Did that Secret Chief really exist?

This magician loved late-night walks.

Mathers was a troublesome genius who never went out and instead sponged off of his students when out of drinks and cheese, but there was one place even he would take the time to walk to: the British Museum. The many texts stored there were the one thing in the world that had complete power over him. As one of the founders, it perhaps went without saying he was a bookworm through and through. He only visited irregularly, but since he had slipped into the shadows of London, he wanted to read everything he could.

(Grimoires borrowing that king’s name have been more common of late. Now, it would do the world a great service if I could search out the oldest records I can find, sum up their main points, and create a simple checklist showing whether or not they are connected to that king.)

“The ability to gather all those texts into a single whole would be a truly great invention. Hm, but that would eliminate the fun of navigating the maze of bookcases.”

Mathers laughed as he strolled through the London night. He had apparently forgotten Annie’s warning that it was his meaningless evil laughter that gathered the patrolling authorities’ attention. Not that he had been listening to her in the first place.

It was late at night. The museum was no longer accepting ordinary visitors.

But such a truly skilled magician did not think he had to enter through the front door. Not when knowledge was calling his name. As a count, it was only polite to answer its invitation and accept its hospitality.

Mathers felt pain after taking three more steps along the dark street.

From a physical attack.

It felt like a hammer blow.

The heavy impact passed through his thick cloak and clothing to reach his right shoulder.

(It’s broken.)

He noticed only after he was hit.

Of course, Mathers wouldn’t normally make such a mistake. He would have instantly detected the assailant’s intent to attack and sent one of the seven demon lords after them.

“Hm.”

(That means this person knows my methods and found a loophole.)

Magicians were a type of technician Taking out his dominant arm first was a decent decision.

Mathers took a few more steps as if nothing had happened and then turned around.

If someone was there, this would have established a type of resonance that made them turn around too, but it didn’t work.

The dark street was deserted.

He had focused on the wrong place.

Aware of that, Mathers chuckled self-deprecatingly.

“So not even the British Empire is safe? If this attack had happened in broad daylight, I may have ended up in the papers as the victim of another theatrical crime.”

It was that era too.

It had likely made some good sample material for the latest fad of psychology. Some bored ripper had caused a bit of a stir, and that had been enough to distort the world. Crimes were growing and evolving to make the current level of excitement a thing of the past.

Mathers gave a snort of laughter.

Was this some magic being used to that end? It seemed familiar and then Mathers recognized it as an evocation spell he himself had expanded upon based on a certain code book.

“Being the biggest in the world really does have its downsides. There are far too many possible traitors.”

The Isis-Urania Temple was a grandiose name, but it was really just an apartment rented by the cabal. With the exception of the ceremonial ground, the only light came from an oil lamp. And there were shadows in the corners.

She had nothing solid to go off of.

But Mina Mathers’s eyes dropped to her ring as she spoke under her breath.

She was a top-rate magician whose greatest weapon was art and she had created several texts on various forms of visions and meditation as reference material for the cabal.

“Honey…no, it can’t be…”

The world was sliced apart by the shadows of the night, but Mathers’s confidence remained intact.

“Did you learn this from common society? Theatrical really is the best way of describing it. The way these crimes stimulate the people’s baser emotions in such a short period of time shows they were designed by someone who understands the basics of theatre.”

Didn’t one member of the Golden cabal hope to build a theatre? And wasn’t she the woman who wanted to tear apart Mathers and Mina’s relationship?

But Mathers wasn’t dense enough to end his search for the culprit there.

In fact, unlike a common play, the magician had no need to search for the culprit at all. Curses would return to their caster. Or could be set up to do so. If he defeated and eliminated this, it would also harm the magician responsible.

If he had some spare time, he could always search out the foolish traitor who would be writhing in pain from their own curse, but Mathers wasn’t that cruel. The worm could die in the gap between the filthy wall and wooden box where they were hiding.

Summoning and evocation might sound impressive (which was on purpose since Mathers and the other Golden magicians had given them those names for that exact reason), but there was no need to construct an entire angel or demon in order to produce deadly force. That would be a lot of wasted effort and giving it a head – and thus the ability to think – created the threat of revolt.

Sealing Telesma in a talisman or weapon was sufficient for most magic and it technically didn’t even require existing matter.

“Still, this is a makeshift version. I believe Waite is still trying to fine-tune it.”

Mathers only whispered.

Something floated in the air.

A single card. It had been there from the beginning. But in the dark night with only sporadic streetlights, an object the size of a leaf would go unnoticed floating in the breeze.

It was a tarot card from the Major Arcana: the Magician. It meant cleverness, an enemy trap, and willpower. It was the chance to begin something and the beginning of change.

(I see.)

That told him the purpose behind this curse.

And as soon as he accurately interpreted it, a line of light appeared on the ground directly below the floating card. The line bent in accordance with some kind of rules, drawing out a sharp, angular star on the ground. It was around 2m across. The eight-pointed star was drawn out in a single continuous stroke. Instead of specializing in a specific element, this symbol was a combination of all elements.

It was not being created anew.

This meaning had been included in the card from the start. You could say Mathers himself had given it a temporary external appearance with the power of his imagination. He was, after all, one of the cabal founders with a 7=4 grade. If he wanted, he could view the floating card as a heart, drape a thick cloak around it, and turn it into “false person” with a 3D silhouette…but after thinking it through that far, the obsessive man sighed. He consciously lessened his focus. He did not need to thoroughly analyze all the details here. Knowing the meaning and coordinates was enough.

The octagram symbolized the power of all of the elements. If intentionally used incorrectly, it could create a powerful blow to anything composed of the four elements formed from the four qualities.

That made this a colossal spring that could move freely along the ground. It would approach its target and, once their coordinates coincided, reject them, launching them straight up. There was no real altitude limit. If you only wanted to kill someone, you simply had to launch them from the planet. Mathers’s right shoulder had been crushed because the star had passed right next to his foot and only the arm sticking out past his leg had been hit.

“Is that all you have?” Mathers was exasperated. “How careless. You were reliant on the element of surprise and your initial attack failed to kill me, but you aren’t erasing all evidence and preventing me from sending it back at you? Did you not even consider the possibility of a counterattack?”

Did they refuse to listen, or did they lack the brains to understand? He doubted it.

Not if this was being controlled remotely.

The octagram zigzagged along the ground, approaching him. With speed surpassing a coal-powered automobile. As if it were dragged along or guided by the floating Magician card.

Annie Horniman’s grimace wasn’t just due to the burnt oil stench of the lamp on the table.

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t considered the possibility. She had vaguely realized this might happen.

But not because she had used the tarot cards Waite was still so seriously working at readjusting the numbers and symbols for. No divination was necessary for anyone with ordinary sensibilities to sense interpersonal trouble brewing.

The problem was how few of the eccentrics in the magic cabal were capable of reading the room like that. They were all the overly intellectual type who needed to gaze into a crystal ball or flip over some cards to figure out something so obvious. So they wouldn’t notice someone’s anger until it exploded in their face.

Of course, Annie didn’t particularly care what kind of disaster befell Mathers.

If a coal-powered automobile hit him on the side of the street, knocking him into the Thames where fish swarmed around to consume his flesh, that was fine by her. Her arms would be open to comfort the newly-widowed Mina.

But…

“…”

Someone stood in a corner of the room.

Mina Mathers. But her eyes weren’t on Annie. She was staring at her ring, her thoughts only on her husband who had left and still hadn’t returned. She looked somehow smaller than usual.

(Well, if that’s how it is.)

Annie sighed softly and hefted something over her shoulders. She felt their weight bearing down on her. As much as she didn’t like it, she made her way to the Isis-Urania Temple’s exit.

After solving a numerical puzzle on the table, Westcott raised his head and gave her a puzzled look.

“Oh? Annie, is that your Jachin and Boaz? Where are you taking them?”

“To go kick someone’s ass☆”

“Evocation.”

It changed.

The people, the air, the presence, the world.

All it took was that word from Mathers.

For an opponent like this, he didn’t even need to pull out the four symbolic weapons his wife had made.

The evocation and the exorcism were two parts of a single technique.

All things that could be summoned by humans could be swiftly driven out by humans. Just like the person who set a train in motion needed to be able to stop the train too.

“I call on one of the seven deadly sins. On one who was once viewed as an even greater demon lord than Satan and Lucifer. On a god who has not lost his great power even after his true name was corrupted.”

This genius was not led astray by the impressive-sounding seven deadly sins.

He was not satisfied with just Beelzebub.

That was why he searched out so many undeciphered texts in the British Library and translated the Hebrew into Latin and the Latin into English so modern people could read them. That was why he reproduced, resurrected, and made use of ancient gods from an age before a certain holy man was hung on the cross. That was why he dug back up the powers that were buried long ago for the convenience of those in charge.

Even if this occasionally made him a target for the Anglican Church’s assassins.

The star which drew out eight sharp points with a single stroke veered off of its shortest attack route. It stopped right in front of Mathers and moved erratically to the sides. It was clearly being controlled by someone rather than being a simple guided weapon.

It seemed to be squirming. Or taking frozen evasive action.

But Mathers had finished.

“Come forth, Baal Zebul.”

It only took a single strike.

Unable to even touch Mathers, the collection of lines pasted to the ground were twisted and burned through while the floating card was forcefully flipped over before its ashes scattered in the wind.

It was in that moment that a certain genius forcibly overturned his deadly fate.

“Oh.”

A figure doubled over.

She was at the former site of one of the Thames’s innumerable wharves.

An altar, flags to the west and east, tablets of different metals, a few seats for each role… So much time had been spent decorating the place to make the temple look like a proper temple, but now it was all in a miserable state. No, that wasn’t quite accurate. A great power had burst from within or sliced through it all. Everything used for the curse was destroyed equally.

She felt intense pain and heat in her right shoulder.

She couldn’t claim ignorance there since she had sent the curse.

“Oh, ohh.”

(It’s…broken.)

This wasn’t like a spell that ended once it was launched from your palm.

A doll.

A dagger.

This was part of why Mathers had concluded he need not search for the culprit.

She had created her game piece by summoning a large quantity of Telesma and having it carry her mental image through the card. That image had been her deadly desire and it could be seen as part of her being. Controlling the monster with her own thoughts gave the attack much greater odds of success, but sending in a deadly monster still linked to her also created the risk of this happening.

Just like blocking off the long steam pipe providing power to a large factory would apply pressure to the central boiler and eventually cause it to burst.

An attack could travel back to her.

“Ohhhhh- gbh.”

Doctor Berridge and Coroner Westcott had once argued over Scotch that the inside of the body could not actually feel pain, but that was a lie. How else could she explain this excruciating pain that felt like having her entire body twisted apart?

A cold sweat formed on her brow.

She focused all her willpower on slowing her breathing and attempting to resume refining her life force into magic power, but she struggled to control her body.

Her thick shoulder bone had been broken. Far too easily.

“Gevurah, the fifth sephirah, the element of fire. That is, the 6=5 robe of the Egyptian role. Accept me as I free myself from the bonds of my physical body and depart. Purify the calamities and flaws of my soul with the flame spoken of in the records of the ancient gods. I will be reborn here, stripping off all my old wounds and pai-”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

The figure shook.

Annie Horniman spoke casually to her.

“I get wanting to cast off your body and escape the pain and fear after having the recoiled curse break your shoulder, but astral projection is a form of mental manipulation used to surpass the limits of your surface consciousness. Using it too often can get you absorbed by your own subconscious, unable to return. The Sphere you’ve been secretly putting together knows how to do all the calculations, but you should really stop there.”

“Where did I give myself away?”

“Nowhere really. You just seem like the type who would like remote attacks. Taphthartharath, was it? I remember your plan to summon that symbol of Mercury. Oh, sorry. ‘Envoke’, right? I still don’t quite grasp that new definition Mathers and the others came up with one day out of the blue. Anyway, you were sitting around the table with a few of your apprentices planning a ceremony to call on that thing. Not that I think you can manifest the real deal.”

This had been a theatrical crime.

The threat had incorporated the logic of a play, but Annie Horniman wasn’t the only one with a connection to that industry.

Wasn’t there another?

The Lady of the Masquerade Ball. That magician was in fact a famous actress.

She had clearly been on edge back at the Isis-Urania Temple. She hadn’t participated in the conversation when Mathers caused a scene or when everyone was testing Waite’s prototype tarot. Not once. The only person she had openly spoken to was Westcott, whose charisma made him a contact point for any number of areas.

“It’s just no fun…”

At this point, she didn’t bother making excuses.

Had she given up on all mental activity?

The masked woman puffed on the long, skinny pipe that passed right through her smooth mask and breathed out a toxically sweet cloud of smoke.

“So many rules. So many restrictions. Creating the framework of a cabal may have been a necessary part of getting our secret club started, but that stage is over. The promises made to get it started only weigh us down now. I want to enjoy magic more lazily. I want to immerse myself in it, intoxicate myself with it, and forget all about real life.”

“We call ourselves the world’s largest magic cabal and now we’re falling to internal strife? It’s so human I want to laugh.”

“Oh? Don’t you also want that arrogant and dogmatic Mathers to die? Although in your case it has nothing to do with his influence over the cabal.”

“Well, yes. I would have killed that freak ages ago if that were an option.”

But she hadn’t. She hated his guts for selfishly throwing her life off track and for marrying Mina. Killing him just the once didn’t seem sufficient in her opinion. And yet.

Her reason couldn’t have been simpler.

A pair of heavy objects crashed noisily to the ground.

A white pillar and a black pillar.

Annie Horniman grinned belligerently with one of the long clubs in each hand.

They were from the same cabal.

She wouldn’t kill the woman, but she would rough her up a bit.

Until that beautiful throat and tongue sang that she would rather die.

“This is what happens when you even slightly harm the life my Mina chose for yourself, okay?”

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume9 Chapter4

2024-12-27T01:01:33Z

Churronzon: .

==Chapter 4: At the Center – Duel_and_Struggle,CRC.==

===Part 1===

The hospital’s 1st floor hallway was a straight path to the ICU where Anna Sprengel slept.

“Heh heh.”

The red-clad silver young man’s shoulders shook with laughter.

He mocked the foolishness of Kamijou Touma whose shoulder was gushing blood where his arm should be.

“I wondered what trump card you would rely on in the end, but all you did was break the glass container? That one normally sleeps within his coffin, but he naturally awakens when he locates the disease plaguing this world and returns to his coffin once he is no longer needed. Producing the world-healing elixir is all well and good, but how long can you last like this? Given the rate of blood loss, I would guess 10 minutes at the mo-”

Kamijou Touma wasn’t listening.

A single step covered all the necessary distance. He softly sent the translucent dragon emerging from his right shoulder toward CRC.

It didn’t feel like punching with a fist or biting and tearing with great jaws.

It was probably a miniscule attack like a forehead flick.

A mass of compressed sound erupted a moment later.

That was all it took to launch Rosencreutz several dozen meters down the hospital hallway.

“Oh, ohh!”

This result shouldn’t have been possible.

Misaka Mikoto, the other #5 girl, Academy City’s next-gen weaponry, the Transcendents of the Bridge Builders Cabal, the grimoire library, the Magic God, and even legendary magicians like Aleister and Kingsford had failed to achieve this.

This was the very first clean hit against him.

And it happened almost too easily.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!?”

He bounced repeatedly, producing the sounds of physical destruction, the screams of muscle and bone, and the wet hacking of bloody coughs.

But none of that explained CRC’s trembling.

He was looking down at his own left hand.

Still seated on the floor, the silver young man viewed his own hand pressed against the floor and he trembled.

“You made this old man…''touch the floor''?”

This was a first.

It hadn’t been allowed to happen even once before now.

He had always stood tall on the battlefield. His march across Academy City had continued unabated even during the satellite’s heavy metal bombing and the Hula Hoop’s largescale particle accelerator cannon. With that in mind, just how much power had this small result required?

''This far surpassed human limits.

''The boy had chosen to cross that line.

Because he had sworn he would save the greatest wicked woman who could only wait for death.

“…”

Kamijou Touma provided no response.

He did not speak up in triumph and he kept his head lowered, hiding his expression.

A change came over the boy’s own shadow at his feet.

[[Image:GT Index v09 BW6.jpg|thumb]]

''It flickered.

''Unnaturally, like a dying fluorescent light.

What had this power cost him?

It was like the boy, who supposedly had a physical body, was shifting into the realm of shapeless and weightless illusion.

“………………………………………………………………………”

He took another step.

That was enough for the world to distort and strain. The space around him definitely sank. If he had stepped with greater purpose, it might have triggered an inwards gravitational collapse in that space, creating an irreparable hole.

The wordless action conveyed a single purpose.

Kamijou Touma was stepping forward to approach CRC once more.

This wasn’t over.

He wouldn’t let it end with just the one attack.

He would tear CRC apart, chew him up, and fully eliminate him from the world. He would save the people he considered important, even if it meant staining his hand with blood.

He had made the decision.

“I see.”

Rosencreutz did not speak at length here.

When taken to their absolute limit, formulas became beautifully simple.

Just like E=mc<sup>2</sup>, CRC’s conclusion was a concise one.

Cracking sounds came from all across his body as he stood back up. He lifted his hips from the floor, placed a hand on the wall, and allowed himself all the unsightly actions it required.

“I admit it. You have convinced this old man: this world is a fascinating place☆ Eh heh heh heh! I truly did not think it had anything left to satisfy my playfulness and eliminate my frustrations. Ah hee hee hee!?”

His eyes were directed straight at the dragon boy.

Drowning in his own passions, the holy man finally viewed that single boy as an enemy.

Kamijou Touma and Christian Rosencreutz.

A clash between superhumans had begun.

===Part 2===

The air was strongly compressed.

There was no need to hold anything back.

Kamijou approached from straight ahead, so Christian Rosencreutz held out his palm.

That was an invisible attack capable of destroying anything.

That brutal spell was clearly magic, but not even Kamijou’s Imagine Breaker could have stopped it and it would have torn the arm off instead.

The compression of the air passed a certain point and it rumbled out like an explosion.

But Kamijou did not speak a word.

He instructed what lay beyond his nonexistent right arm and the invisible dragon moved slightly. That was enough to overturn all the assumptions.

The dragon’s maw – and its razor-sharp teeth – bit a black object, stopping it in its tracks.

The object was a bit larger than a golf ball.

“''A…projectile''?” muttered Aradia, her eyes widened in shock as she watched from the sidelines.

This was the identity of the extremely powerful magic that supposedly made defense impossible.

There was no mystery or miracle there. In fact, if a projectile was given a lethal amount of destructive force, it would naturally be moving too quickly to see with the naked eye. That unchangeable rule remained the same even when magic had influenced the logic. It was only a common parlor trick.

Kamijou did not bother with mockery. For that matter, he showed no human reaction at all. He only swung his arm dragon horizontally, tossing the annoyance of an object aside.

Why waste time on ordinary emotion when he could dedicate that time to devouring his prey?

That was the only thought behind his actions.

“Hee hee. So you can finally fight back and let me have some fun.”

Rosencreutz continued firing.

Annoyed and irritated by the identical attacks, Kamijou’s dragon released a deafening roar.

It was possible the boy couldn’t control it himself. The sloppily swung jaws deflected CRC’s projectiles to the side, sending them ricocheting toward hospital rooms with no connection to the fight.

The silver young man grinned.

As if to say he had guided things in that direction.

But the fearsome attacks vanished into thin air before contacting the wall.

“Oh?” breathed CRC in fascination.

He had sensed something worthy of his interest.

“You eliminated my attacks without permission? No, this is a simple matter of willpower. Any attack launched without a powerful intent to kill will be swallowed up and destroyed. And any attack that misses its mark swiftly loses all meaning.”

“…”

“After experiencing an improbably uniform amount of misfortune, you loathe lucky shots from your enemy. And this old man loathes all coincidental actions that go against my passions and playfulness. I see. Our clashing wills have distorted space on the macro level. But,” said Rosencreutz with a mocking grin. He held his palm out to the side, casually aiming at the wall there. “Kee hee hee, ee hee, hwa ha ha ha ha ha!! That leaves me plenty of room to play. ''As long as this old man directs his intent to kill toward those strangers, I can still hit them''!”

Space was immediately sliced through over a distance of more than 100m.

But not because CRC had sliced through the innocent hospital patient beyond that wall.

A moment before he could, Kamijou Touma jabbed his dragon jaws forward and had it exhale a violent beam of light. Then he swung the jaws straight up to slice CRC’s right arm off at the shoulder.

Rosencreutz showed no interest in his own right arm spinning through the air.

“''Mend''.”

As soon as he spoke that one word, the nearby rubble gathered around and formed something like the smooth arm of a mannequin to stop his bleeding. This was not a resurrection that returned him to normal. He was only mending by creating something new. After traveling the world, gathering all sorts of knowledge, and going around teaching people the secret art to create a human from scratch inside a still, this was a simple task for him. He didn’t even bother checking the movement of the arm that was lither and more beautiful than a real human arm. Instead, he raised his gaze straight up.

The ceiling had split.

But not because it had been sliced through.

Like custard or gelatin, the hospital’s walls and ceiling had separated themselves to the left and right to avoid Kamijou’s attack. Including the beds, the medical equipment, and the wiring in the walls. It all forgot its original texture, spread apart at the center like a slime, and then reconnected like nothing had happened.

It was like the building itself had a mind and a life of its own.

Christian Rosencreutz drew on his vast wisdom to instantly explain it.

This was not creation or destruction.

It was…

“''Did you command it''? The intimidation of the crowned dragon king can command all living things, but also all inanimate objects?”

Those words carried deeper meaning than it initially seemed. And not just the silly risk of CRC himself obeying the command if he got careless.

Stray shots, hostages, other’s lives?

With this ultimate power, Kamijou wouldn’t have to worry about any of that.

Which meant…

''There truly was no one in the world who could stop Kamijou Touma after this monstrous transformation!!

He attacked again. But this time, it wasn’t just a beam flying from the dragon’s jaws.

The dragon itself detached from his right shoulder and flew out.

“Hwa ha ha hah!!”

CRC laughed loud, swung his body upwards, and dodged by breaking through the ceiling.

He had reacted to the real threat rather than let it hit him and see what happened. And at this point, he had finally quit relying on magic. He had needed to move faster than he could put together a spell.

The battlefield spread beyond the one long hallway.

They moved to a rehabilitation room, a break room, an operating room, and finally a nurse station on one of the higher floors.

It all looked the same, so Kamijou couldn’t tell what floor he was on. But the boy taking a step beyond humanity did see a familiar face down the hallway.

It was Aogami Pierce.

He was a powerless high school boy. But he was standing protectively in front of a small girl in pajamas who was holding a picture book. His legs were shaking, but he hadn’t frozen in place. He had purposefully chosen to stand there.

Whether he was more interested in the young girl or her mother was unclear, though.

Right and wrong didn’t matter here. He wasn’t bound by that.

Seeing that his awful friend had meant what he said, the boy who had partially fallen into illusion briefly smiled like he always did in the classroom, but then he renewed his resolve. Kamijou Touma forced his gaze away and viewed his powerful foe instead.

CRC – Christian Rosencreutz.

He could not let that monster go free and focus on that boy and girl.

No matter what.

“Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

“Oh? Kee hee hee, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!”

They clashed head on.

Kamijou swung the silver young man to the side.

He kicked him away and then tossed him up into the floor above.

He didn’t stop there, of course. He had already begun his next action.

The air froze.

The giant maw gnashed its teeth intermittently, creating a disturbing sound not even a guillotine or bear trap could have mimicked.

“Kh.”

While clinging magnetically to the hospital’s outside wall and trying to pursue the fight up to the upper floors, Mikoto found her feet pinned to the outside of a window. Pinned by fear. Her instincts were running wild and weighing heavily on her reason.

“What…is this? A psychological form of paralysis?” gasped the blonde girl with her arms around the #3’s hips.

If they would ensure that even the next attack would hit no matter how long the leadup, then the intimidation of those gnashing fangs could be called a surefire attack.

But it didn’t work on the silver young man.

An unpleasant sweat wet his brow, but he was still smiling.

He acted out of playfulness and a desire to blow off some steam, so this could not bind him. After all, not even the #5 power had worked on him when it was used by ''its mysterious owner''. CRC was a monster with the mentality needed to continue smiling in this situation.

And Kamijou didn’t care.

Something flew from the dragon maw like a whip. It was a long, chameleon-like tongue. CRC stepped back before it could ensnare him, but then he realized something.

“Hm?”

''He was gone.

''Kamijou Touma had disappeared in the brief moment CRC’s eyes were off the boy.

But he could sense him.

A great pressure was approaching from the front!!

“You are a poikilotherm – that is, you have the ability to blend into the surrounding environment. But did you really think that would work against this old man?”

CRC swung a single arm, not hesitating to strike a point of empty space.

A cross with several sharp rose vines tangled around appeared there. It was more than a meter tall and it was entirely made of heavy gold.

It didn’t matter. A disturbing sound of bending metal rang out.

Kamijou and the dragon maw appeared out of thin air. The fangs and the cross struck each other.

The result was a series of snapping sounds.

“Kh.”

Seeing the cross bending, CRC kicked a nearby stretcher into the shutting jaws. It could be hard to tell since they were made so light for greater portability, but the stretcher was made of sturdy stainless steel to ensure it didn’t drop a critical patient. It wasn’t going to break in a crocodile’s jaws or in a brown bear’s grasp.

But the jaws were not slowed.

They closed at the exact same speed, the row of fangs approaching Rosencreutz’s hand holding the cross.

That cross was not magic.

Nor was it an illusion, but the arm jaws still chewed it up and erased the intruding wreckage from the world.

Those jaws would destroy even unshakable reality.

This was a new power Kamijou Touma had acquired at the cost of his own destruction.

It was an attack that allowed no response.

And most likely, it was a tragic power gained when someone gave up on someone else.

“I see.”

Rosencreutz smiled while dripping with a sweat of both tension and a desire to fight.

That smile contained an unusual heat as he shouted.

“Tell me. Why go to such lengths to protect Anna Sprengel? Hee hee, how much longer do you have left? What did you discover by accepting your own assured destruction?”

Only now did human language leave Kamijou Touma’s lips.

In a situation which screamed that doing so was the abnormality here.

“I will…protect Anna.”

But these were definitely his words.

Because…

“I…wrong to…search out…reason…excuse to fight…”

That was the final humanity left inside the boy who had become a monster.

It was like a tiny stone rattling around inside him, but it was something he couldn’t afford to lose.

So he refused to lose it.

That ordinary boy would never again hang his head and overlook a magical atrocity.

“Interesting – kee hee – but not good enough!”

Rosencreutz held his empty palm out toward the boy’s face.

While their weapons were locked.

That attack had already been identified as a projectile. But in this moment, the invisible dragon could not move to stop the point-blank projectile attack.

With the unpleasant sound of the air being compressed, Kamijou Touma’s entire head was obliterated.

He didn’t even have time to blink.

Kamijou took another step forward like nothing had happened. His head had already regenerated. A dragon tail appeared out of thin air and twirled away as a substitute. That was likely a lizard’s tail that would take on any damage he took. But Kamijou knew without being told that it was a move he could only use once.

Now that he knew he had that option, he wished he had held onto it for longer.

His gaze shifted to the side. The action showed some lingering regret. It all felt like it was happening to someone else. Single use and not knowing the effect until you used it was a devastatingly bad combination.

And with his eyes still in that direction, he casually sent the Dragon Strike straight toward CRC.

“Tch.”

Rosencreutz immediately fell back.

He escaped beyond the reach of the snapping jaws, but Kamijou did not bat an eye.

The entire surface of the invisible dragon jaws ''erupted''. All its razor-sharp scales shot out. They rushed out to pummel Rosencreutz’s entire body like a point-blank shotgun blast.

“Ohhhhh!” shouted CRC just before a white steam explosively filled the space.

In the Rosicrucian cabal, clouds were an important symbol of covering up wisdom and truth to prevent the unworthy from viewing it. Inside that cloud, no attack could hit him even if made from 0cm away. The entire space could be filled with a dense scattershot, but it would be as useless as trying to attack a cat that may or may not be there because no one could observe it.

Kamijou swept the dragon horizontally to tear the thick cloud apart in an instant and then the color red sprayed out.

The cloud didn’t matter at all.

The dragon released its breath.

It looked like a sharp purple-shining blade, but was that actually the poison stored in an evil dragon’s body being released at extreme pressure?

The box was shredded, the cat was forced out to establish its existence, and then it was killed.

“Kee hee.”

CRC laughed and took immediate evasive action, but also ignored the deadly toxin traveling through his bloodstream.

That silver young man had many legends told of him, but he was an alchemist at heart. He used alchemy as a starting point for all of his miracles, from the artificial life within the crystal to the red elixir.

So…

“You would use a nonexistent toxin against this old man? All poisons and harmful substances can be converted into medicines and beneficial substances if handled properly. Just like radiation can induce the cancerization of cells, but it is also used to treat cancer. It would be rude to not present you with my own wisdom in return!!”

Rosencreutz produced a deck of cards in his hand.

He fanned them out and went on to rotate them in a full circle in violation of gravity.

“The secret spell of Rota can be flipped around to make Taro, thus it can be converted into the cards that indicate the 10 spheres and the 22 pathways. Awaken, 78 cards. You are the one and only proper entrance to the light pouring down from beyond the tree – that is, the Ain Soph Aur, Ain Soph, Ain!!”

A violent white light exploded from the emptiness at the center of the card circle.

A beam of light sharper than a razor scorched the air as it rushed toward Kamijou’s right arm. The all-destroying dragon maw was split in two. While he was dragged around by the chaotically thrashing dragon, even more blood gushed from the boy’s shoulder.

The toxic red splattered across the floor and walls.

Christian Rosencreutz scoffed at the colorful artwork.

“Hee hee hee hee hee! How much longer now? Feeling lightheaded? Can’t stop the cold sweat? Worried by your pulse pounding in your chest? Nothing you do can reach this old man!! Even if you wring out every last drop from the depths of your heart!!”

A moment later, beams of light rushed out from seemingly every direction.

“Wha-!?”

CRC realized the boy’s bloodstains had drawn out strange patterns.

The instant he gasped in realization of what those patterns meant, the ''magic circles'' glowed with a disturbing light.

The floor and walls bubbled redly. It wasn’t just the white beams. Crimson serpents that should have been controlled by a lamp emerged, as did the yellow Citrinitas sand that had engulfed Los Angeles.

They surrounded CRC and came at him all at once.

His right arm was already fake, so he sacrificed that while backing away from the deadly chaos, his eyes widening at witnessing what shouldn’t have been possible.

“A scientific esper like you has entered the realm of magic?”

That was no longer CRC’s exclusive territory. Kamijou had intruded on the legend of the rose and the cross.

But how could this be?

Christian Rosencreutz was no ordinary magician. His very existence had become a legend. He refused to accept that even a Rosicrucian expert could understand and immediately make use of the spells he used.

But the fact remained that the red blood splattered on the walls and floor crawled, glowed, and bubbled.

It all drew out secret texts and magic circles known only to CRC. Even though these were the most secret of spells that he had never even shared with the others at the House of the Holy Spirit where they had all shared so much knowledge like they were sharing a meal. Not even the grimoire library would have been able to find these spells if she searched for them.

Had Kamijou Touma already evolved into a monster who could access the world itself and automatically use the magic he found there?

Something occurred to Rosencreutz once he considered that possibility.

…Known ''only'' to CRC?

“I get it now. ''This is a Rorschach test.''”

He should have caught on quicker.

An esper like Kamijou was using magic but showing no side effects.

“The magic knowledge did not come from within this broken esper. He showed this old man indistinct bloodstains, which I interpreted as the secret texts and magic circles I knew, unwittingly drawing out their magic!”

But however it had been done, the magic known only to Rosencreutz had still bared its fangs against him. Knowing the logic behind it did not stop his mind from imagining those shapes when he saw the bloodstains.

Of course, there was risk to Kamijou as well. He had no way of guiding what Rosencreutz imagined when he saw the bloodstains. This was a double-edged sword that could just as easily capture Kamijou himself in a powerful magical blast.

“Trithemius!!” shouted CRC, intricately moving his fingers.

Immediately, the magic light approaching him froze in place and stopped moving. He had made use of the encryption method that Westcott had coincidentally discovered. Rosencreutz had applied a random encryption to the bloodstains which had become secret texts and magic circles, eternally locking them so they could never be used. Much like ransomware encrypting a hard drive.

Rosencreutz felt a sizzling sensation at his temple.

This wasn’t like before. This emotion was anger.

The silver young man’s internal state had shifted up a gear.

“You dare force this old man to use magic out of something other than passion or playfulness? You continue to prove yourself to be my greatest nemesis!!!”

So what?

Kamijou ignored that and took action.

Something grew from the base of the great jaws that had replaced his right arm. It resembled a giant cape, but it was actually a sinister bat wing. The single wing gathered the air and then flapped.

The air became a solid mass and then became an extraordinary projectile that flew through the hospital.

At the same time, all the windows frosted over, the air electrified, and thick bolts of lightning rushed toward Rosencreutz from every direction. Was this what would happen to someone if they were thrown inside a large, swollen cumulonimbus cloud?

“You have not just created wind. The air pressure obeys your will, allowing you to control the weather!?”

This was well within divine territory, making it a legit miracle.

It could be blessed rain, or it could be electric divine punishment.

And CRC could also control clouds. He brought two fingers to his mouth and blew between them. One cloud struck the other, the weather conditions were forcibly altered, and the lightning changed course.

Kamijou Touma was already there.

He had rapidly covered the space between them, arriving right in front of Rosencreutz.

“Kh.”

The silver young man split the floor below him and broke through every floor below that, ending up in the hospital’s basement.

He wasn’t afraid of a ''normal'' punch.

He only realized after the fact that this had been a downwards strike from directly above.

But the hospital itself hadn’t been damaged. All of the floors in the way had parted like gelatin all on their own. After dragon-tamer Kamijou jumped down after him, the holes silently closed back up on their own too.

CRC held his palm out toward a thick metal door.

“The red elixir can conquer all deadly disease and even manipulate the lifespan!”

With a series of solid clanking sounds, the door, a cart, a scanning device larger than a fridge, and various other things gathered together and took the shape of a giant doll. It didn’t matter that they were all inorganic items. A liquid nitrogen tank must have burst because a thick white frost covered it all.

But Kamijou took action before it could actually do anything. In fact, Kamijou had punched Rosencreutz down here because he wanted something down here: the medical waste incinerator.

That special electric furnace could reach temperatures as high as 3500 degrees Celsius.

“…”

The wall right next to Kamijou audibly broke.

The following crunching sounds did not come from the invisible dragon maw.

''Kamijou Touma was chewing it in his own mouth.

And the boy raised his right arm. The front-facing dragon jaws opened as wide as possible. This was something new. Something massive and brutal filled the depths of that mouth with a dangerous light.

He didn’t hesitate to unleash it.

Magnetron Dragon Breath.

All the dust and moisture in the air burned as a fearsome white torrent tore away at Christian Rosencreutz.

Another taboo was revealed and that monster was backed even further into a corner.

===Part 3===

Light was compressed, sound was released in all directions, and yet no third party was affected.

Not one.

The girls had their hands full simply keeping up with the constantly moving battlefield. Misaka Mikoto moved freely along the hospital’s outer wall with her magnetism and Shokuhou Misaki held onto Mikoto’s hips, but both of them could only watch the intense fighting play out. That had to be the same for Aradia and the Bologna Succubus who were probably outside flying in the sky. No one could intervene in this direct clash between superhumans. Attempting to would cause it all to fall apart. Just like any stimulus to calmly simmering water could cause an explosive boil. No, that wasn’t it. That was only an excuse for their own inaction. Their real reasons were nothing so noble.

(It was me.)

Mikoto clenched her teeth at the thought.

She was staring pale-faced at where the boy’s right arm should have been.

(I pulled the final trigger!)

''She was simply afraid to do anything more.

She felt a deep aversion, like she were facing an unknown curse. But this wasn’t a gloomy curse born of an individual’s grudge or hatred. She was overpowered by the same sense of wrongness people had toward viewing or touching something holy and inviolable.

“What am I supposed to do about this?” she muttered distractedly.

This may have been the same feeling Level 0 Kamijou Touma had felt when it was Anti-Skill, Judgment, the Level 5s, and the Transcendents doing the fighting.

Their roles had reversed.

Now that boy alone had complete control of the battlefield.

Only he could face this enemy.

Titles had lost all meaning.

And the situation was still underway. This was no time to be stuck at a standstill. Kamijou was not a fount of unlimited possibility. Nor did he have a hidden power or special ability.

His shadow was flickering unsteadily. This power was bought at the cost of his own destruction.

Which meant there had to be a time limit.

===Part 4===

Kamijou and Rosencreutz clashed head on and the boy broke through a wall, flying across the hallway leading to the elevator. He was knocked up the elevator shaft and rolled along the floor before coming to a stop.

He found himself in a large cafeteria.

He felt an unpleasant sensation below him.

He could barely see it without straining his eyes, but the culprit was yellow sand.

The color of defeat had permeated the area.

Even though a hospital needed to be as clean and sterile as possible.

“…”

Kamijou Touma silently stood up and then wobbled to the side.

As if he were struggling to support the weight of the massive jaws.

Blood was still gushing from the shoulder where his arm had been torn away. He was not going to last long like this. In just a few more minutes, he would collapse from blood loss and he would not be getting back up again.

He stared at CRC. At that man driven by playfulness and curiosity who was now smirking with sweat soaking his face.

“Oh.”

So.

Kamijou didn’t care what happened to himself. His own destruction had been part of the plan from the beginning.

He had to find some way of ending this before he ran out of time.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

Guessing a major attack was coming, CRC grabbed something out of thin air.

Whatever it was, it glowed red.

“The ruby’s shine points to the pure red of the rose. That female symbol is a pair to the cross and can produce anything and everything. So mass-produce monsters of death and destruction here and now!!”

A tremor ran through the building.

And not just one. More and more 2m silver orbs known as Pneuma-less Shells appeared, until they had filled the space.

The giant silver bubbles all opened at once. Not even Rosencreutz knew what would emerge. Still holding the mother device – the symbol of the red rose – CRC only laughed.

These things absorbed mystical power like a shaman.

They mechanically decoded it.

And they released it into the world.

“Stone tools – the oldest form of deadly bludgeoning. Wooden sticks – the oldest form of deadly whipping. Uranium – the oldest form of radiation poisoning. The oldest form of drowning. The oldest form of deadly gunshot. The oldest form of deadly burning. The oldest form of vigilante killing. The oldest form of hanging. The oldest form of decapitation, of skewering, of deadly vibration, of crushing, of electrocution, of poisoning, of vehicular homicide, of karoshi, of mincemeat death, of explosive death, of death from being buried alive!!!”

They split open.

Kamijou clenched his teeth.

And he released a brutal purple breath from the dragon.

Mutual death was fine by him.

“Gahhhhhhh!?”

There were legends of that sort.

For example, Norse mythology told of a great serpent that had grown until it could surround the entire world. During the final battle of Ragnarok, that dragon even managed to defeat the #2 god at the cost of its own life.

“Jormungand from…Norse mythology? Did you use the weight that not even Thor could lift to forcibly crush your own wound and stanch the bleeding?”

Kamijou didn’t understand any of that.

And it didn’t matter if he did or not.

There was precedent. In exchange for losing a possibly deadly amount of blood, this dragon that emerged from his right hand had robbed all power from a girl after she became a lightning god.

“Kh.”

The right arm – the invisible dragon – gained further control over the boy.

The shadow at his feet flickered unsteadily. It looked ready to flicker out permanently at any moment.

But an iron will of “that’s fine with me” could be seen within the boy.

If he could protect Anna Sprengel and the people who had helped try and save her, he was willing to move beyond the boundaries of humanity here.

So when Kamijou Touma raised his head, the light in his eyes did not waver one iota.

“~ ~ ~!”

Tears formed in Rosencreutz’s eyes.

He had not succumbed to fear.

CRC took an objective view of his own crisis and was moved to tears like he was watching a movie.

“Ha ha.”

And that cheap and irresponsible emotion was what allowed that passion-driven wicked holy man to draw on his greatest power.

“Ah ha ha ha ha ha!! Incredible, simply incredible☆ This old man has actually being driven into a corner? Death has drawn so close? Hee hee. This is where it all begins. Once this old man pulls off a miraculous comeback and escapes alive, I will truly drown in my tearrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrs!!!”

That was like a trigger.

No matter how twisted and rotten he was, his playful side could resist the temptation of achieving mutual destruction with his nemesis.

And once he shifted fully toward survival, only one option remained.

Namely…

“''Run away''!!!”

He didn’t hesitate.

He broke a still-intact window and jumped out through it.

As much power as Kamijou now possessed, he had lost a lot of blood from his severed arm. There was no need to actually fight him. By moving far away, CRC could wait until Kamijou ran out of time and collapsed.

Kamijou would die on his own as things were and, if he were to try to use first aid to recover, CRC only had to slice off the boy’s head or tear out his heart.

Rosencreutz never would have allowed this before. Not because he was too proud. His playfulness and desire to blow off steam simply wouldn’t have accepted it.

But his objective had already changed.

Pride was just one form of enjoyment. Now that he had changed his objective from “victory” to “survival” and he longed for the pleasure of achieving that, he knew fleeing was the best option.

“Hee ha ha!! We will meet again after the barrier of time has crushed you and stolen everything from you!!” he shouted.

The very next moment, something exploded.

Rosencreutz was forced back inside the hospital.

It wasn’t a mysterious barrier or a never-before-seen ultimate attack spell.

It was no more than a 45cm piece of plastic.

An isosceles triangle flew just outside the window. It was a Snakehead drone and it wasn’t alone. A large group of them flew together like a flock of starlings or bats. The writhing mass of machines looked like a black serpent flying through the sky.

These were by no means elite crafts. All they did was locate their target, ignite their solid fuel, tackle their target at high speed, and detonate their internal explosives.

But they had still stopped Rosencreutz’s escape.

These were only mass-produced weapons, but CRC was only human. If he didn’t respond in some way, his body would be obliterated and he would lose his life. This wasn’t a decisive blow, but it still forced him to respond, limiting his options.

A voice spoke from their small speakers.

“Don’t try to carry the fate of this city on your own, you monstrous freak.”

This wasn’t about catching up or standing on the same field.

A group of disposable pawns was enough.

“You’re still human and one of Academy City residents I’m responsible for as Board Chairman. Don’t you dare forget that!!”

More and more drones ignited.

Each blast was no more powerful than a shoulder-fired anti-tank rocket and they didn’t do any real damage to CRC. But this was never meant to defeat that man. He had to throw out his pride as the #1. If these seemingly useless attacks could keep Rosencreutz still long enough for Kamijou Touma to deliver his own attack, that was more than enough of a win.

===Part 5===

It all began there.

Without that one act, they probably never would have had another opportunity.

Shokuhou Misaki bit her lip, made a decision, and aimed her TV remote.

“Don’t underestimate the power of a girl in love.”

She didn’t have to catch up.

But she still decided to make herself a part of this battle.

“Category 909: Preserve Consciousness. I will support you as much as it takes☆ So I’ll never forgive you if you relinquish your mind ability over something as silly as blood loss!!”

Kamijou Touma had been wobbling unsteadily side to side, but now he stood straight and solid.

This may not have had much of an effect on the boy when he had his right hand, but things had changed.

The Bologna Succubus joined in too.

“Oops, you beat me to it. But I’ll just add my rad Cold Mistress on top of that. The pleasures of death and resignation will reach you as the most excruciating pain, so don’t let your guard down, kid!!”

“Again she’s stealing my bit.”

“I have no idea what you mean♪”

Something had clearly shifted.

It was all turning against Christian Rosencreutz.

Maybe none of them could defeat him. They couldn’t carry such a major role. But stopping his cowardly flight was another matter. As long as it would lead to the ending that boy had shortened his own lifespan to achieve.

''They still had options.

''And that realization ignited the hearts of everyone there.

''They gathered all their power here to make sure his spirit would not be broken!!

“Tch!!”

Rosencreutz clicked his tongue in that antlion pit of a situation.

If he stropped struggling and was swept toward the center, those uniquely deadly jaws awaited him.

“What’s this, CRC?”

Ashamed of herself for relying on this, Witch Goddess Aradia danced as if sliding along the floor. Her bare feet mixed the ointment needed to prepare her Triple Reload.

“You seem awfully angry for someone who planned to slaughter us Transcendents to stave off boredom. Is that because the world you find before you is anything but boring? Yes, this is a colorful world of powerful stimuli where anything is possible – life, death, victory, and defeat.”

“!?”

“In the end, you are the kind of holy man who can only talk big when he has an overwhelming advantage. Someone like that can never understand that boy’s depths,” whispered Good, Old Mary. That Transcendent’s resurrection spell would mean she had seen all the many ways people met their deaths. “In truth, he is not all that powerful. In fact, he lost his life several times on the way here. But each of those deaths was the end result of living his life to its fullest – not once did he pull his punches when it came to living. He was constantly struggling to win, but when he did lose, he would pick up the pieces and continue forward anyway. He could not be more different from you, who grew bored with his strength but still clung shamefully to your current status.”

A quiet metal clink sounded.

Misaka Mikoto had flicked an arcade coin into the air.

When it landed back on her thumbnail, she took aim.

And she roared.

“I’m shooting a Railgun. Everyone, clear the line of fire!!!”

The air was compressed.

This normally would have been no threat to CRC. But in this one moment, the silver young man definitely frowned. He was annoyed. Which meant this was effective.

Altogether, they couldn’t have bought more than a minute of time.

But that was enough. Without a word, Kamijou Touma approached once more.

Half-dragging the giant dragon maw with him.

And…

===Part 6===

In the ICU, little Anna Sprengel was lying in a bed and surrounded by cold, hard machinery. Her expression looked peaceful at first, but it would have burdened a medical expert with great anxiety. She was not being given any kind of anesthesia, so the lack of response to the pain was not a good sign.

The color red flowed through several clear tubes.

There were a lot more of those tubes than normal.

“How is the dialysis going?” asked the frog-faced doctor with uncharacteristic tension in his voice.

“The process itself is going smoothly.”

Anna’s hair was unnaturally damaged. Blood did not flow through the hairs themselves, but they still received oxygen and nutrients to stay healthy.

That meant something was wrong with the patient’s blood.

“The processing of the blood before it is returned to her body is working too. Her blood type is being temporarily altered.”

The technician and a nurse were busily working even now.

Providing someone with the wrong blood type would put them in critical condition. That was undeniable. But it was also true that some people’s blood type had changed after a transplant for the bone marrow that created the blood.

So if all of the blood was changed and not just a portion of it, there was a chance of survival.

“This so-called ‘curse’ carries out its fatal attack after identifying an individual by their blood.”

The frog-faced doctor was a science-side physician.

But even if he couldn’t explain it with his own knowledge, he was not the kind of person to tell a suffering and dying patient that their pain couldn’t be real because none of the medical texts described anything like it.

He would save everyone suffering from disease.

Even if the disease had not yet been written down in any medical texts.

“So if the blood type flowing through her veins changes, this ‘curse’ should lose sight of its target and cease to function. I just hope that ends this.”

The word “curse” gave it an archaic and exaggerated impression, but he only had to think of it like a form of pollen allergy that reacted to an individual’s face or name.

(I do hope this “curse” can’t last forever without a target.)

Bacteria harmed people in order to survive and toxins harmed people because they took the place of a necessary substance. So if they could not function correctly, they would eventually be broken down, ejected from the body, and naturally disappear. They were neither good nor evil. It was no more than a struggle for survival.

“At this rate,” muttered the frog-faced doctor.

That was when ''a dull tremor shook the building.

''And the overhead lights flickered.

While this wasn’t a complete blackout, it was highly unusual. The hospital always had multiple power sources to ensure the survival of its critical patients. So instead of a problem with the power generation facility itself, this had to be something wrong with the wiring in the wall or ceiling.

Something had changed.

Critically changed.

===Part 7===

Kamijou Touma slowly collapsed forward.

No one could stop it.

He had lost too much blood.

His time limit had always been 10 minutes at the longest.

Not even Shokuhou Misaki and the Bologna Succubus’s psychological support could get him around the limits of his physical body.

The only trump card capable of defeating Rosencreutz had broken.

He fell to the floor.

The dragon vanished into thin air.

“Ha ha.”

Laughter echoed out.

Of course, it came from none other than Christian Rosencreutz.

“Now your defeat is assured,” said the silver young man, looking down to the floor. Calmly. “There never was an answer. You never could have found a way of defeating this old man. But this result is still a doom born of your own choices. ''You sought strength as a human, but you still grasped at inhuman power once you were desperate.'' Everyone watching this must have thought the same thing: ‘Oh, Kamijou Touma has deviated from his usual ways.’ And that deviation is what brought this result. You made a mistake and you were never going to find real power in that mistake. None at all.”

Wicked violence had won out in the end.

And.

''Death swept out.

The Bologna Succubus was blasted away like an artillery shell and Witch Goddess Aradia was embedded in a wall. Misaka Mikoto’s microwave radar wasn’t enough to detect what caused her to spin through the air and slam into the floor. Shokuhou Misaki pressed a TV remote against her own temple, but something impacted the back of her head before she could boost her eye movement. This wasn’t like someone being knocked out in a movie or drama. Something unseen clearly broke and split inside her head.

Accelerator could only watch while remotely controlling the Snakehead drone swarm.

Their time was up and defeat led to this.

“Kee hee, ee hee. Hee ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

Death.

Killing.

And red.

“Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! …Whew.”

Christian Rosencreutz once more appeared from the background. No, he had finally come to a stop after moving so fast he had become no more than flowing lines.

His only remaining enemy was Good, Old Mary.

Had he intentionally left her until last, or was it only a coincidence? It could also be that she had partially defended against his attack.

“''Now, joker. Who will you resurrect with that single-use trump card''?”

“…”

“Do not expect this old man to sit idly by and watch. You will only be able to resurrect one of them at the cost of your own life. …And, Good, Old Mary, I seriously doubt you can defeat this old man on your own. Your only value is in your resurrection. So who will you entrust your dreams with? Who will you choose to turn this all around?”

Would it be Misaka Mikoto or Shokuhou Misaki?

Or would it be Aradia or the Bologna Succubus?

Each of them possessed tremendous power. Not one of them was an ordinary human. With the Ace, the Queen, and so many others with varied talents available, who would Good, Old Mary choose?

“Take your time and think about it.”

He laughed.

He scoffed.

Because the answer was obvious from the start.

“Hee ha ha!! But there is no real answer! No matter who you bring back to life, they cannot defeat this old man. If human death were absolute, you could have given up. But because you possess that resurrection trump card, you are now trapped in my prison, kitchen alchemist. Will you agonize over it for eternity, or will the pressure be too much to bear so you make a careless choice only for this old man to tear you both to shreds!? Watch as your own actions reveal just whose side you have taken and who you have made your enemy. Kee ha ha ha ha ha. Regret your own choices as you search in vain for an answer!!!”

In response, the final remaining Transcendent breathed a soft sigh.

And Good, Old Mary spoke.

“''No one''.”

“?”

“''I will not bother resurrecting anyone at this point. You are the one who has run out of time. A second before, you might have managed it. But you lost sight of what truly matters here, you continued to ignore the life you should have been focused on taking, and you carelessly crossed the final crossroads. It is too late to put things back the way they were. No matter how much you try.''”

He tilted his head.

CRC expressed pure confusion.

But the silver young man should have shuddered in fear at that simple truth. He was drawing a blank. He could not come up with anything that fit the situation presented to him. But if whatever it was could slip his mind, how much of a threat could it really be?

He still didn’t understand, so Good, Old Mary pointed elsewhere.

The answer was there.

Aleister Crowley.

The magician CRC had defeated and proceeded to ignore had stood back up.

He was badly injured.

It was incredible he was still alive.

If he had feigned death, he might have had a greater chance at survival.

But he had instead clenched his teeth and stood up. Who out there had inspired him to do that? Why could that human challenge CRC over and over with the golden retriever by his side?

''Who did that human really, truly aspire to emulate?

“I don’t care…how many times you fail.”

Words spilled from his cracked lips.

The person he had entrusted this fight to had already collapsed.

And as a result, 99% of the people who had trusted that boy enough to gather here were now dead.

That was a defeat.

Kamijou Touma had failed to meet their expectations.

But despite the red and black stains covering his body, that human’s spirit was not broken.

Because…

“I will not lose hope in you, no matter how many times you lose or fall. I swear it. Thinking back, it was rare that you found an easy victory from beginning to end. But you always made sure to collect someone’s life before it was lost. That was no illusion. So I will believe in you. …You expect me to accept that a little thing like defeat is enough for you to give up? No matter how many times you fall to your knees, I know for a fact you will stand back up again.”

“Young one?”

“So consume me if need be. Great Demon Coronzon! Holy Guardian Angel Aiwass!! You monsters were always too much for a constant failure like me to handle. But just this once, support me. Help me buy the time we need. Give me the power to uphold my promise!!”

“You think he will get back up? Based on nothing? That loser is soaking in his own bloody vomit and you would still place all your hopes in him? Good, Old Mary could perhaps resurrect at least one person here if she were willing to sacrifice herself to my attack, but you won’t even do that!?”

“That is not what it means to believe in someone,” stated Good, Old Mary. She directly cut down that unbeatable adversary’s words. “You do not believe in someone because it is logical or because the odds are favorable. Human beings believe in and pray to the people they truly want to believe in. You were once a target of that sort of belief. If you have forgotten this, then you really are ''unworthy''. Unfortunately, the savior that mama and the rest of the Transcendents prayed to was not at all what we hoped for.”

So Good, Old Mary had chosen to believe in that boy instead.

Truly believe.

''If she sacrificed herself to resurrect one person here, it ended there. Once she died, her resurrection could never be used again. But if she was patient, survived, and believed that this deadly battle would be overcome without choosing the easy option of self-sacrifice, she could use her resurrection on each and every one of them. Only then was the possibility of saving everyone available.

That was what it meant to believe in someone.

Such belief was never spoken of in terms of “at least”.

Not everything came down to superhuman actions. There were options that became available if you wished for them hard enough.

No one was discussing logic or odds. The thread of possibility was so very thin, but Good, Old Mary chose to believe in the future she most wanted to believe in. Because she knew the foolish compromise of forcing herself to believe in something she didn’t want to believe in would never lead to a gentle and happy world.

“And no matter how absurd it might seem, there are times when our selfish expectations and beliefs are answered. There are people who will crawl through the mud and do whatever it takes to make that happen, no matter how poor their chances. And sometimes they will ultimately reach what they were struggling for.”

“…”

“People value such things as ''miracles''. CRC, I am certain you were once capable of that. You might have done so even in the modern world. But while you let your passions and playfulness guide you, you passed the final crossroads and reached a point from which you can never return.”

In the very corner of his vision, Christian Rosencreutz saw something rise up.

Whatever it was, it was stained red and black. It was someone who should not have still been alive.

The answer was obvious.

This was what the living and the dead had all believed in.

Kamijou.

Kamijou Touma.

“Impossible…” blankly muttered Christian Rosencreutz, suddenly trembling. “You never had a chance to use your resurrection. This old man would never have missed it.”

“True. But mama did not use it on anyone. Not even him.”

“Then this can’t be happening! A normal human had his arm severed and was left to bleed out for 10 minutes. Do you have any idea how much blood he would have lost in that time!? The answer is in liters! And you expect me to believe he overcame that because of some nonsense about believing in him!?”

“Should you really be spouting nonsense at the moment, CRC? Need I remind you that you are the corpse the Bridge Builders Cabal once believed in?” solemnly stated Good, Old Mary. “He answered our call. Unlike you, he did not run from the power of belief. The rules have changed. You completely missed the crossroads you couldn’t afford to cross and you walked right on through. The legend so many people believed in and prayed to is long gone. You are no more than bait now. Bait used to show off a new legend that has accepted the power of belief and is working to create a better future. You allowed yourself to be reduced to this, CRC.”

Kamijou made a horizontal swing of his nonexistent right arm.

The invisible dragon burst out.

It emerged once more.

That was the answer.

Kamijou Touma and Aleister Crowley stood side by side, both bloody and battered. They didn’t need to exchange any words. This team up should have been impossible, but it was possible within the legend of this moment.

There was no cue.

Aleister simply gave a thoughtful look.

A moment later, they both raced forward.

Straight toward their greatest enemy – Christian Rosencreutz.

“Ohhh!!” “Ohhh!!”

In response, CRC gulped and calmly worked out the answer in his head.

“The scientific angel Kazakiri Hyouka and the artificial demon Qliphah Puzzle 545.”

And the person behind those two.

New Board Chairman Accelerator.

“That particle accelerator cannon that gathered all the city’s power was not aimed at this old man.”

Using the Hula Hoop particle accelerator to launch a deadly attack within the city was all well and good, but what happened at the other end? They couldn’t have it pierce through the outer wall on the opposite side of the city and then burn down Shinjuku and Yokohama beyond. This group was too soft to accept that level of sacrifice. So what had they done?

His miniature model was useful for running searches, but there was one thing he had to watch out for.

It only provided the information he actively worked to search for.

Which meant he could miss something.

Especially when it came from a blind spot he hadn’t considered.

“You were holding two nonhumans in reserve, but you knew they could not defeat this old man if you simply sent them after me. So you found a way to inject them with a massive amount of energy without me noticing. ''Angels and demons are effectively collections of energy, so this boosted their raw strength and energized them''?”

They had sided with Kamijou Touma.

Realizing they couldn’t defeat CRC even in their boosted forms, had the scientific angel and magical demon instead opted to assist Kamijou?

As the leader at the top, the question for Accelerator wasn’t who achieved the victory. As long as he could eliminate the threat of Rosencreutz and bring peace back to the city, nothing else mattered.

It wasn’t an issue of logic or odds.

People believed in the person they wanted to believe in.

So while he wasn’t physically present, the #1 had not hesitated to focus on that particular trump card.

“Did you use the absence of his right hand to sneak them into his body? So that their invisible hands could squeeze his stopped heart and start it beating once more!?”

Thus, it wasn’t just two people approaching Rosencreutz.

Far more people had believed in that boy. They had entrusted him with their lives, their futures, and the fates of Academy City and the world.

“''Rosencreutz. It doesn’t matter how hopeless a reality you are.''”

“''Yes, and it doesn’t matter how much of this world you destroy.''”

Kamijou Touma would not run away.

He carried all those things on his back as he poured all his strength into the invisible dragon.

“''If you insist we can’t save anyone here''…”

“''Yes, and if you insist the good and the wicked cannot be equally saved''…”

The hits landed simultaneously.

“''Then we will destroy that illusion!!!''”

[[Image:GT Index v09 BW7.jpg|thumb]]

The God Purifying Demon Destroyer and the Conqueror of the Battle of Blythe Road.

Two inhuman fists flew and mercilessly launched Christian Rosencreutz beyond District 7’s borders.

===Part 8===

When the little wicked woman opened her eyes, she had no idea where she was. She saw a white ceiling, detected a chemical scent in the air, and noticed a great quantity of medical equipment surrounding her. The hard plastic mask over her lower face irritated her. But she was hesitant to move. She didn’t think she even could move right away and, given the tugging sensation from beneath her skin, she could guess she had several needles piercing her blood vessels and had tubes and electric cords attached all across her body.

Nevertheless, she was alive.

Anna Sprengel was alive.

“Where…am I?”

Peering down at her was a doctor with a froggy face.

He gave her a gentle smile.

This doctor had lived up to the belief a certain boy had placed in him.

Heaven Canceler spoke in the same way he always did.

“You’re going to be fine. It’s all over now.”

Some who saw this might have praised it as a miracle.

The commonplace miracle of life.

===Between the Lines 4===

“''Ugh, is this for real, mistress''?”

“''Yes. As much as I would prefer not to believe it, it appears so.''”

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Chapter4

2024-11-02T04:27:00Z

Churronzon: were > where

==Chapter 4: The Unfortunate Boy’s Focus – Over_the_River.==

===Part 1===

H.T. Trismegistus looked at everything before him.

He had known the cause.

Which was why he had thought Alice would go back to normal if he killed Kamijou Touma.

He had thought he needed to punish Anna for messing with Alice.

He had always been on that small girl’s side.

Because he had thought ''common sense said'' it would be cruel to throw such a small girl out into the world alone. In that case, her tremendous power would not be an advantage. It would only be an omen of danger. She would be like a young child who inherited a vast fortune. She would be the perfect bait for all the scum lurking in the shadows. He had decided he should protect her and look after her. It wasn’t about logic. He thought anyone would decide the same thing after seeing her, which meant it was common sense. He had believed in the goodness of the world at large.

But in that case…

“Oooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

What was this?

Was this what he had wanted to see?

Wind blew wildly through the library, but this was no meteorological phenomenon. Great currents of a nonphysical power created ''tailwinds'' and ''headwinds'' in rapid succession.

As a regular Transcendent who had used Alice as an example to get where he was, he could not rescue the girl who was his starting point.

Attempting it was as meaningless as offering a hand to help her to her feet while also pinning her down below his foot. Pulling on her hand like that would only tear her arm off.

Thus.

CRC. Christian Rosencreutz.

He had thought the only way to save that lonely girl was with the help of a power not derived from Alice and that common sense told him was greater than hers.

That was the only option.

He couldn’t think up anything else.

But when the holy man was reborn, he was nothing like the common legends and he hadn’t been interested in saving the world, ''including Alice''.

Alice had smiled like normal after having her head crushed, but it had felt somehow off.

They had reached their limit.

Alice Anotherbible had.

The Bridge Builders Cabal, who wished to save the world but couldn’t make the attempt on their own, had.

The Transcendents, who had erased their own opinions and thrown out their own identities, had.

They all had.

They had made the wrong choice. H.T. Trismegistus had passed that fatal branch and started down a path to hell. He had finally realized that. There was no undoing what he had done, so what could he do to fight it now?

There was no optimal answer.

So what kind of compromise could he reach?

“…”

He had made a fatally mistaken decision, but H.T. Trismegistus was still a Transcendent. He dressed up in the appearance and abilities of the god he had chosen, he chose his salvation condition, and then he saved everyone that applied to. So even in this situation, he directed his question not to himself but to the thing that determined all his actions.

In other words, he asked it of the entire world.

What did common sense say?

Was it really right to ignore a crying girl?

===Part 2===

They were in a library filled with light.

Not a grand temple or castle. It was part of a certain boy’s school, which Alice Anotherbible had said she wanted to see. That was the reason she had chosen this as the final location.

There was no further significance there.

Alice had in fact offered up her entire being, including her life, there.

What had that small girl really wanted?

This had nothing to do with the fate of Academy City or the madness spreading across the world.

Kamijou had to sense what was deep inside Alice.

He quietly clenched his teeth.

Strongly.

The time had come to directly face that cornered girl’s feelings.

“Touma-”

“Don’t bother trying to analyze this with your 103,001 grimoires,” roared Kamijou, still facing Alice.

He intentionally ignited his heart.

“I know what I have to do regardless: punch Alice to bring her back to her senses!! Being the strongest doesn’t mean she has to carry it all on her own. I refuse to let her be alone for even a second longer!!”

Kamijou Touma.

Anna Sprengel. H.T. Trismegistus.

Those three faced the girl together. They glared at her without fleeing. Their positions, plans, and abilities were completely different, but they were all working toward a single goal here.

''Don’t forget.

''And if you have forgotten, we’ll show you.

“Don’t falter.”

''Alice Anotherbible.

''You aren’t alone.

''Your loneliness is no more than an illusion.

''There are still plenty of people out there who want to save you!!

“Let’s do thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis!!!”

Kamijou shouted to shake off the fear and raced forward. With his right fist still clenched tight.

Well before he made it in punching range, he heard a hard crunching sound.

It came from Alice.

No, down at her feet.

He knew better than to ask why or for what purpose.

Alice was already doing something.

Whatever this was, that irregular Transcendent had chosen to use her own body to act.

And she chose to attack.

“Fool!!”

Little Anna kicked him in the back of the knee from the side.

As soon as his view dropped straight down, something tore diagonally upwards through the air.

All sound vanished.

Five clawmarks were torn diagonally through the library wall directly behind Kamijou. Same for the many bookcases in between. Only after the fact did he realize the same would have happened to him if his head hadn’t lowered by a few dozen centimeters.

Claws.

Scratches.

That primitive attack had been amplified to the extreme.

“''If you die, it’s over.'' I know it’s obvious, but you can’t forget that absolute rule!! Good, Old Mary’s resurrection does not work against fatal wounds caused by Alice herself. If you really want to save her, then you can’t expect the world to do you any favors. You can only reach out your own hand to help her!!”

If the expert named Anna Kingsford were here, she would have easily seen through it.

The only one here who reached that level understanding was the Grimoire Library with access to 103,001 original grimoires.

“Was that magic?” asked Index in disbelief. While reaching out a hand to help Kamijou back to his feet. “Since people’s interior worlds are linked to the physical world outside them, anything you can do with your body can be used to reach a mystical power that changes the entire world. I get that, but still.”

“All those fancy gestures and ceremonies are only meant to purify and cleanse your will,” said Othinus.

Kamijou took this time to gently push the little god into Index’s hands.

Everything about Alice was the ultimate enigma, so he wanted to ensure the survival of anyone who could help explain it all. And he didn’t think he could protect Othinus if she was with him.

“But Alice Anotherbible has had her baseline purity ''forcibly increased'', so each and every one of her actions is pure without going through that process.”

“We should consider ourselves fortunate,” said H.T. Trismegistus.

That was the gloomy young butler’s assessment.

Because…

“We are in fact incredibly fortunate that Alice cannot ''kill her enemies with a thought or set the world in motion to kill her enemies if she wills it.'' This tells us she must take a physical action to trigger her attacks. Common sense says we are lucky indeed.”

But that also meant this wasn’t limited to her scratching claws.

The girl who had become a fully-grown woman faced Kamijou while tilting diagonally.

She took a step.

Just one.

“Touma, she’s coming!!”

“!!!???”

He understood that, but he couldn’t restrain his reflexes as a living being. Crossing his arms in front of his face was a definite mistake.

The sweet scent of tea filled the boy’s nose. Something was overpowering the library’s old paper smell.

Alice Anotherbible already stood behind Kamijou.

''Walking

''In other words, she took action to move to her desired location.

She had not formed a special shape with her fingers, nor had she stepped in a complex pattern.

She had taken the same action anyone could.

She was blessed with a special result without having to focus on it.

The meaning extracted from her ordinary actions was just too pure!?

“Ali-!?”

She was already right there.

Kamijou spun around and swung his right hand back in something like a backhand blow.

But it found only air.

The grown woman pressed her four limbs down against the floor like an animal and lowered her head as far as it would go.

Crawling.

She had moved to his blind spot and then his last-second counterattack had missed. What this meant squeezed at his heart. He might as well have offered her the perfect chance to attack him.

The young butler did not hesitate to move.

Light flashed from his right hand as the blade hidden in his cane turned to light and sliced through the floor. The strange slash had an effect well beyond the length of the sword. And it struck right where crawling Alice’s lowered head was. It definitely hit. Except the metal blade passed right through her. Like she was intangible.

A specific meaning had been extracted from her ordinary action: evasion.

“It doesn’t matter if you hit her or not!?” hatefully spat Othinus.

As long as the adult woman moved to dodge, no external damage could affect her. Even if she took a direct hit from a nuclear missile. Alice showed no interest in H.T. Trismegistus even with his attempted decapitation of her. Still crawling, she raised her head and casually extended her hand toward Kamijou.

“''I was right.''”

Apparently the young butler’s attack had been to check something.

He had ended up cutting through the floor below Alice instead of her, so it fell.

That had been his intent from the beginning.

He had intentionally destroyed the floor so he could gather more information and survive.

Kamijou would die today.

''But he didn’t care about that anymore.

“Hey, wait, human!”

“(Keep Othinus with you, Index!)”

Just as he passed that message on with a look, the entire floor collapsed.

His feet were freed from gravity and his vision slid straight down. Along with the heavy bookcases held in place with quake-resistant screws.

“Gah!?”

Kamijou, Anna, and Trismegistus himself were caught up in it too, successfully distancing them from Alice’s hand.

They just barely escaped alive.

Instead of an ordinary classroom, they found themselves in a large space that must have been lined with steel office desks. Or the remains of it, anyway. The first term in the new school had yet to begin, but the desks already had some personal items on them. Was this the faculty room?

Only Alice wasn’t affected.

The grown woman’s long blonde hair swayed as she looked down at them from the upper floor. The floor only remained in the corners of the room and Alice alone stood there.

Like a wounded animal bleeding and furious while trapped by a fishing hook or some plastic tape that a human had thoughtlessly discarded.

Like a lonely animal.

One that’s threats and howls echoed with melancholy.

''This isn’t over,'' thought Kamijou as he forced his aching body back onto its feet. No matter how battered his body was – even if he was in such a bad state it would make a doctor scream in horror – he was still alive. For now, at least.

The power balance of Transcendents and whatnot no longer mattered. Just a person was good enough. As long as he still lived, even the puniest human had the right to change the course of the battle with his own conscious decisions.

And the extraordinary strongest being was only looking at him.

That much was a relief, at least.

(Index and Othinus are probably up there. And unlike Alice, they were by the door, so they can escape at any time. They don’t need to stay on the dangerous frontline. As long as I can call them, they can still provide information support!)

“She uses a variation on this, doesn’t she?”

Kamijou heard a dull “thud!!” and turned to see a 2m metal orb next to Anna. That was the Pneuma-less Shell, a spiritual item that produced tools from civilizations the world over and extracted the world’s oldest causes of death from them.

“But in Alice’s case, she doesn’t even rely on a tool. She draws out the meaning contained in the actions she takes and unleashes them as an attack. It’s a type of magic and also a type of miracle. She takes the ridiculous-sounding legends of holy men and woman producing miracles empty-handed and develops a logical way of actually doing it. Or that’s the sense I get from it, anyway.”

“…”

“Supposedly she was created when some Teacher of Crowley went a step too far and modified Alice Pleasance Liddell, so maybe if you follow the path back from Magick to Golden magic and then Rosicrucian magic, you can see the essence of my spells in what she does.”

On the floor above, Alice ignored their conversation and moved.

She tapped her heel down.

Creating a vibration.

It didn’t matter that they were on separate floors.

Kamijou and the others went stiff. They were pinned in place.

Stomping.

It was a juvenile act of resistance and intimidation. A challenge and attempted reversal against someone who was clearly your superior. It was a threat meant to overpower adult logic with childish instinct and a primitive gamble that all humans attempted at some point.

It worked.

The adult Alice jumped down in the single second the world was frozen.

She aimed to land on Kamijou. On the top of his head.

A dull sound followed.

Alice again knocked something sharply to the ground.

That broke the spell and Kamijou quickly leaped toward Anna and rolled along the floor.

Alice’s heel dropped like a shooting star and smashed deep into the floor.

Little Anna smirked in Kamijou’s arms while they lay in a jumble on the floor.

As if she were bragging to Alice that, no matter how powerful Alice was, it was Anna the boy had done this for.

“Now, did you switch over to 1.5x speed because you thought it was just a boring exposition scene? The Pneuma-less Shell is not a demonstration-only show item. It is a spiritual item that randomly produces a cause of death and not even I can fully control what it does!!”

She held a staff.

The strange staff looked like a giant golden cross decorated with a red ruby rose.

“You should thank my excellent luck of the draw, fool. The gold cross and ruby rose – the world’s oldest ''human-made'' miracle of the rose is the destruction of the origin. It brings death through disillusionment. It supposedly has ancient origins, but it was first depicted in the middle ages and rediscovered in more recent times. It contains all the violence found in the magic of extreme growth and maturity!!”

Miss Sprengel raised the staff in her little hands.

That was all.

There was no fancy incantation or complex magic circle. Flames simply appeared in the empty air and were released from the staff. They shot toward Alice with a liquid motion. These were not ordinary flames. They were magic flames that scorched and burned away space itself regardless of the physical material, like an old photograph being burned from behind.

Alice grabbed her long hair as a single mass.

And she swung her head around.

In a move straight out of kabuki, the thick bundle of hair drew a large circle in the air, which narrowed down as soon as the crimson flames passed through it.

The orange flames stopped in midair.

Binding.

In other words, stopping all movement of a target. And separating the target out from all possible interference.

“Tch!!”

The Pneuma-less Shell was Anna’s spiritual item, but what weapon she acquired was a matter of chance. She wouldn’t receive the same weapon if she tried again.

But that brief moment of regret was a mistake.

Alice tugged on her hair binding the flames, causing little Anna to pitch forward and lose her balance.

At that same moment, the grown woman took a step forward. They had seen what this did already. Whatever the distance, Alice would have already arrived at her destination.

Which meant right in front of Kamijou.

For an instant, he lost all depth perception. Alice’s grown chest suddenly blocked his view and his pupils couldn’t focus in time.

She arrived straight up in front of him with a flowing motion.

By the time his eyes had finally caught up, Alice’s fingers – and their sharp claws – were extending lithely toward his throat.

Time stopped. He tried to swing his head to the side and dodge, but his body couldn’t keep up.

He couldn’t die yet.

He might die, but it couldn’t be now.

He thought that so hard it seemed to burn into his mind. After all, the girl who had forgotten how to cry and instead howled like an animal was right there in front of him. He couldn’t die until he had saved her.

Light pierced sharply in from the side.

Time resumed flowing.

Alice doubled over and rolled along the floor.

This first clean hit did not come from Kamijou, Anna, or H.T. Trismegistus.

They heard a voice.

“What the hell? Did I really just hit Alice? Not to mention I thought we couldn’t even approach this center area because we were cut off spatially and temporally in that labyrinth!”

It was Aradia, god of witches, the moon, and the night.

A short distance away, the Bologna Succubus was on the ground grappling with a bipedal hare. After absorbing the shadows of next-gen weapons until she was large enough to trample the school building underfoot, Mut Thebes was engaged in a direct fistfight with an equally gigantic cat.

Hadn’t Anna mentioned the other Transcendents had arrived at the school too?

Kamijou and the others must have fallen far enough to reach where those Transcendents were battling the Gryphon, the Executioner, and so on.

Unlike Kamijou, Alice had not invited them.

And they couldn’t slip past those defenses like Anna could.

They had forcibly entered a labyrinth with no goal. In there, they fought an endless battle against Alice’s brutal toys – which might look comical but were all monsters capable of overwhelming Academy City’s dark side. That they were still alive showed just how abnormal Transcendents were.

For a brief moment, the dark pressure of death vanished within Kamijou. He felt strength growing from the center of his being.

Alice really wasn’t alone.

The world was not such a heartless place.

Good, Old Mary, Aradia, and the others gained nothing by winning this battle, but they were still here risking their lives. Even though this battlefield was ruled by the ordinary and inviolable rule where death meant losing everything they had been working to achieve.

What motivated their desperate battle?

What could it possibly be other than kindness?

“Fool, this is bad sign. Encountering the bait meant to buy us time means we have more enemies to deal with. By which I mean the Gryphon, the Executioner, and the rest of the Alice Series.”

“You have some nerve running off on your own to flirt, you goddamn villain,” said Aradia. “Just so you know, I’m more than willing to employ spankings as punishment as long as you aren’t one of the witches I’ve sworn to protect.”

“My, my. Quite an outdated way of thinking for such a young-looking goddess. Makes me wonder how old you ''really'' are.”

“I don’t want to hear that from the preserved little girl from who-knows-how-many centuries ago.”

Alice extracted herself from the collapsed cabinets half-burying her.

Her eyeballs rolled in her head.

Even now, that enchantingly lithe woman only ever looked Kamijou’s way. She didn’t even glance over at Aradia who had delivered the attack.

“Kh. Anyway, let’s fall back. We need to put some distance between us!!”

A sharp voice rang through the broken faculty room. Aradia held out her palm and launched a scattershot of light to keep Alice back. Each shot moved like a sea snake as they tore through the air and targeted adult Alice from multiple angles.

The storybook girl said nothing.

She didn’t even look Aradia’s way.

She only extended a finger and rotated it once clockwise.

Like some kind of joke, all of the glowing projectiles veered away from the fully-grown woman, blasting through walls and pillars instead.

Cursing.

That one childish action easily confused every eye on her, bringing them under her spell.

“Kh.”

Aradia didn’t even have time to gasp in shock.

Alice really didn’t look her way the entire time. She simply changed the arrangement of her casually extended fingers. She curled up her middle finger and held it down with her thumb like she was preparing to flick something.

There was no light or sound.

It was a lot like returning the favor.

Aradia broke through the wall and flew off somewhere.

Kamijou’s face paled.

That had definitely hit.

Flicking.

What even was that?

What meaning had been extracted from that simple action anyone was capable of?

Warning bells rang loud in Kamijou’s mind.

''If you died, it was over.

''Death really and truly meant goodbye.

''Because Alice’s attacks were the one thing not even Good, Old Mary’s resurrection could cure.

“Aradiaaa!!”

“Don’t worry, fool. It looks like the two of them distributed the damage between them. But that ''would'' have caused her heart to burst if there hadn’t been two identical Aradias here.”

Kamijou knew now wasn’t the time to ask why that would have caused her heart to burst or what splitting that in half would mean.

He heard a dull impact and saw sparks.

After a short delay, he heard an explosion as a shockwave crashed into the distorted scene.

Something again intersected between Anna and Alice.

In the deadly battle against Alice, the value of each second was far greater than normal. Death was the end. Truly the end. The clock was always ticking in real time and everyone was moving at once.

He could not forget the fundamental rules revealed here.

“But that isn’t reason enough to relax. Splitting the damage in half means receiving the same attack twice will mean the end for both Aradias.”

“…”

So Aradia couldn’t do it.

Mut Thebes could grow endlessly by absorbing weapon shadows and Good, Old Mary could create any tool or chemical with her alchemy, including ones with great destructive power, but Kamijou couldn’t picture either of them stopping Alice.

The Bologna Succubus’s Cold Mistress spell could replace all pleasure with equal amounts of pain, regardless of the target’s physical toughness and endurance. That attack had made even Christian Rosencreutz grimace, but would it work here? Was this version of Alice in a mental state where she experienced that sort of human emotion?

Then would he give up?

He needed to give himself some credit for immediately answering that with a “hell no”.

He had a reason for saying that.

He needed to thank his past ordeals for preparing him for this.

“There is little meaning in analyzing each and every thing she does,” said Anna.

She raised her golden cross staff as if judging the distance between herself and Alice.

“We need to start with tearing down the idea that we can never defeat Alice. And it isn’t the Transcendents and their obvious strength that can do that. It needs to be the more unorthodox fighters like me or you who do that, fool!!”

The grown woman vanished.

The golden cross staff and the primitive and violent jabbing claws crashed together head-on.

Anna had reacted.

She was capable of it.

When the Executioner attempted to make his own attack from the side, Anna bisected him straight down the middle with only a glare. The ruby decorating her staff shined a moment later. Its role complete, a clump of compressed air burst, buffeting Kamijou’s hair and cheeks as a violent wind.

The monsters from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland could actually die.

There were no absolutes in this world.

Kamijou realized it had been that way from the beginning. Alice had always been so absolute, but when Anna Sprengel showed up, the little villain toyed with the situation, laid traps, took control, and otherwise overshadowed Alice.

While Anna hadn’t managed any clean hits, being able to lock weapons with Alice was unusual in and of itself.

Anna and Alice.

Two irregular Transcendents.

Just like Alice Anotherbible brought everything to her side, including probability and insight, Anna Sprengel was manipulating some unseen factor in real time.

“Accept me, H.T. Trismegistus!! You regular Transcendents are based on Alice, so you can never harm her. But if you swap out foundations, you can bypass Alice’s precedence over you. Like comparing heights of the Tower of Babel and the World Tree Yggdrasil!!”

“I am in your debt.”

“I’m only doing this to make that fool smile. And you want Alice to smile in the same way, right? Then hurry!!”

An invisible change came over the air. A weight vanished.

New possibility had presented itself. If Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the other Transcendents also swapped out their connection, they could possibly overturn Alice’s absoluteness.

The young butler once more held his right hand to the staff at his hip in an iaido pose.

The meaning of his sword strikes had changed.

But he was a moment too slow.

With a dull thud, the equilibrium was broken. Anna’s small body took a powerful blow.

Even though they were supposedly equal.

With a single hand, Alice casually grabbed the beaten-up Gryphon to use it as a weapon.

As if it were a giant club.

Grabbing.

The act of denying an object its own will and applying her own will to it by unilaterally wielding it for its offensive or defensive functionality.

Anna could compete with Alice on her own, but that changed if Alice boosted her strength with something else.

That is, ''if Alice turned someone else into a weapon.

That absurdly powerful magic could boost her stats by forcibly equipping herself with something else: a sword, a shumai, a goddess – anything.

(Is that a superior version of Mut Thebes’s ability to absorb the shadow of any weapon!?)

“Gahh!?”

“Anna!!”

Alice made a further attack. The Gryphon extended her reach, so the little villain failed to dodge. She was pummeled hard enough to bend backwards.

Anna groaned and tried to raise her golden staff.

But Alice was again faster.

Alice was always a step ahead. To an unnatural degree.

She grabbed H.T. Trismegistus’s wrist as he tried to attack her from the side. She turned him into a weapon, equipped that weapon, and swung it artlessly to the side.

A direct hit.

A dull impact rang loud.

In this case, taking Anna’s side had been a mistake.

Or maybe he had been thwarted by Alice’s ''tailwind''.

That magic stole power from external sources. If H.T. Trismegistus had remained no more than one of Alice’s toys, he couldn’t have provided more power on top of her own.

The little villain struggled to breathe and a red clump splattered from the corner of her mouth.

The equilibrium was broken.

Despite dropping her golden cross staff, Anna clenched her teeth and stepped forward.

Another impact sounded.

But not from more of Alice’s unreasonable violence.

It didn’t end there.

This time it came from Anna.

Anna and Alice crashed foreheads together.

“You wanted recognition, didn’t you?”

With their foreheads pressed together, Anna spoke from extreme close range.

“You wanted forgiveness, didn’t you? And you wanted love!! Just like me!!! Then you shouldn’t give up. He didn’t care that I’m a villain. I’m here now because he didn’t hesitate to run away with me back then. As long as that fool continues to reach out his hand, don’t just assume all light has vanished from this world!!!”

[[Image:GT Index v10 BW6.png|thumb]]

Alice said nothing.

But a subtle tremor did run through the cheek of her bestial expression.

Kamijou thought that came from something other than her intense emotion.

Then Alice made her next move.

Smelling.

She sniffed out her target’s precise location. ''Which meant her next move was guaranteed to hit, no matter how poorly aimed it was.

Once again, Alice swung H.T. Trismegistus around with a single hand and struck Anna’s little body with her boosted attack. The force of the blow caused the gloomy young butler to slip from Alice’s grasp. No, his right wrist shattered like pottery. Only his hand remained in the grown woman’s hand.

This wasn’t like a home run in baseball or a strike in bowling.

The two of them were knocked away with a strange sound.

Neither one cried out.

Kamijou didn’t even want to think about how much damage that had done to Anna.

While collapsed in a daze, H.T. Trismegistus simply stared up at Alice as she tossed his hand aside. The lack of blood only made the scene more bizarre.

“I…”

Something spilled from the young butler’s lips.

They were words.

That magician had believed common sense would lead anyone to think the same thing after seeing that girl with an unwanted power forced upon her. And the words left his mouth now.

“I wanted to place a roof over her head and protect her from the threats of the world…but I failed.”

Alice Anotherbible wasn’t listening.

The fully-grown blonde woman tilted her head and spun around.

“''Teacher''.”

Toward Kamijou Touma.

As if he was all she could see.

He understood that Alice wasn’t in a normal state of mind.

She hadn’t been when a magician had altered her body, she hadn’t been when she was surrounded and protected by the Bridge Builders Cabal, she hadn’t been when Anna had given her a deep interest in Kamijou Touma, and she hadn’t been when Kamijou’s rejection had left her dazed.

She hadn’t been for so very long.

He understood that.

But that was not a statement she should have ignored.

She had become animalistic and irrational, but it wasn’t like she couldn’t talk. She had just spoken to Kamijou. But she had still chosen to brush off the young butler.

He didn’t interest her, so she wouldn’t speak to him.

Was that the only reason she didn’t react?

(Not yet.)

Don’t lose hope.

Don’t give up on Alice.

Choose to not let her madness grow.

If you began using personal misfortune as an excuse, that was the end for you. In a way, Kamijou understood that better than anyone.

The world was cruel, so he had seen plenty of people unfairly and unreasonably devastated by it.

But Kamijou hadn’t faltered with those people.

He had fought them.

“I was unlucky” was a convenient phrase applicable to most anything, but he knew relying it and overusing it would prevent you from ever finding the way out of the darkness and would meaninglessly force you into a life of misfortune. He knew in his bones that irresponsibly relying on your misfortune would mean rotting away in that filthy dead end forever.

So.

He would teach Alice the proper way to live with unreasonable misfortune.

“You can still fight, can’t you, teacher?”

“I can.”

Kamijou readied his one and only weapon. He clenched his fist.

Hard.

“But that doesn’t matter so the girl will overturn her prophecy because she will make sure to do something to help you and then make up with you and fight with you and be happy so she doesn’t believe what that incomplete library says because there must be a way to help you out there and she refuses to fail because the girl is Anotherbible so we can make up.”

“Sure!! But I hope you don’t think saying that will stop me, Alice!!”

===Part 3===

He couldn’t rely on Anna Sprengel or H.T. Trismegistus anymore.

The other Transcendents were a far way off too.

The ordinary faculty room was everything.

It must have been cut off from the rest of the world long ago.

So it was one against one.

Kamijou Touma vs. Alice Anotherbible, or someone who had once been Alice Pleasance Liddell.

This had been about them from the beginning, so there was no better two to settle it.

So.

“Ooooooaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

“Ooooooaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!”

They clashed head on.

Alice roared like an animal and spread her arms wide.

Hugging.

An act of reliance on another and using your full body to acquire a sense of fulfillment from the outside world.

Of course, a hug from her here would have easily torn Kamijou’s body apart.

A dull sound indicated a direct hit.

From Kamijou. He felt the solid impact of landing a punch.

The sensation in his fist was enough to clear his mind.

In a way, this was to be expected when Alice went all in on attack, spreading her arms and coming straight toward him without even considering defense.

“Kh.”

Beads of sweat flew from the grown woman as she bent back and left her “hugging” pose. With the trunk of her body still collapsed, she clawed at the air with her fingers bent like hooks.

The boy dropped his body down.

After just barely dodging a deadly attack that sliced through the walls and pillars, he threw another punch that Alice blocked with her other hand. But unlike with her “walking” or “binding”, there was no special effect here.

Alice didn’t have time to extract and refine a miracle out of that action.

They clashed a few more times after that, but still Kamijou was not dead.

They both took a step back.

“Curioser and curioser.”

Alice tilted her head.

The fully-grown bondage woman moved with the mannerisms of a 10-year-old.

It was strange and bizarre.

Everything about her was.

“You’re the only one still standing, teacher, but you’re moving in ways you shouldn’t be able to on your own.”

“Of course I am.”

When Alice was taking evasive action by “crawling”, any and all attacks would pass through her.

H.T. Trismegistus had proven this for everyone to see by not hesitating to bisect the girl he so adored.

Alice could extract miracles much like the Pneuma-less Shell but without relying on any tools.

That knowledge came from Anna Sprengel.

However.

“So why don’t you just keep on ‘crawling’ while you attack? Then you could remain untouchable the entire time you send your unfair attacks our way.”

“…”

“Since you aren’t doing that, I can only assume you’re limited to using one miracle at a time. For example, your ‘crawling’ causes any attacks to pass right through you, but it also keeps you from laying a finger on us, so you can never actually end the fight that way, can you? Your ‘walking’ and ‘cursing’ are the same. ''Your miracles are isolated things – they can’t be combined or used in parallel''! Which means I’ve found your weakness, Alice Anotherbible. I don’t know how tough you are, but you can’t make yourself untouchable while you attack. The damage will reach you then!!”

So he would aim for a cross counter.

It wasn’t much, but that was the one and only way out of this battle against Alice Anotherbible.

Alice could use any and all miracles with nothing more than her own body, but she had the mannerisms of a child. She was extremely powerful, but her attacks were all made “on a whim” or “on reflex”, which made it easy to match her timing.

Kamijou hadn’t realized this on his own.

He never could have.

He wouldn’t let anyone say the defeated people’s feelings had been any weaker than anyone else’s.

If Alice could “grab” any object, phenomenon, or person and make it her weapon, then he was supported by the strength of the feelings that had led him to this point.

He couldn’t let this end in tears at this point. He wouldn’t leave anyone behind in the darkness. He would grab Alice’s hand and drag her out of there.

Because that was the power of reality, something not even Imagine Breaker could eliminate.

“What does it matter if they’re not standing here with me? Anna, Trismegistus, and the others showed me the way. They risked their lives to test your abilities and I never would have made it this far without everything they learned. Don’t you get it? They’re still here fighting alongside me.”

“Then the girl will heal herself.”

That was all Alice said.

She was so powerful she had never had a chance to experience defeat and so didn’t worry too much about who won an individual battle. She didn’t fear the possibility of being beaten and dying.

If she did ultimately bury the enemy who stood in her way, it was no skin off her nose if she died once or twice first.

Because…

“Have you forgotten, teacher? The girl already had her head crushed by someone calling himself Rosencreutz. And yet here she is as good as new. So it doesn’t matter to the girl even if you do manage to kill her in exchange for severe damage on your part. ''The girl just has to resurrect herself a billion or even a trillion times if necessary and wait for you to finally wear yourself out''.”

“''But you can’t do anything else while you’re focused on healing yourself, can you''?”

He also had an immediate response.

This wasn’t enough to break him.

Kamijou did not fear that the wishes and feelings left with him would amount to nothing and that all his efforts would be negated in an instant.

She could heal herself?

It would all be for nothing?

So what?

Surprisingly, it was Alice who spoke next.

The fully-grown woman spoke with an oddly calm and quiet voice, like a pot on the verge of boiling.

“What do you think you can accomplish?”

“What, out of miracles already? Why not search through my mind yourself, Alice?”

Alice’s prophecy was accurate.

Kamijou Touma would die.

He had accepted that.

And he had decided he would save this girl using the power he gained in exchange.

So he took the first step forward.

They clashed.

===Part 4===

In a merciless head-on assault, Alice’s fist compressed the air and tore through the existing faculty room while the path of her five claws sliced through the entire building and space itself.

Dodging was meaningless against this.

If she made a single roundhouse kick, it would probably become an AoE attack that struck everything around her. When her attack was like a massive gale sweeping right to left, there was no way to avoid it just by moving your body out of the way.

So it hit.

(Gah…)

Kamijou’s body didn’t just strain.

His body produced dull cracking and popping noises he had never heard before.

He didn’t have time to assess what exactly had broken.

The dulling of his sense of pain was actually a blessing in this case.

Yes.

The difference between fortune and misfortune was ultimately a matter of viewpoint and usage.

He bit his lip so a bloody flavor wouldn’t spill from his mouth and he swung his fist again.

He wanted a cross counter.

But if all he wanted was to knock Alice down to stop her, he didn’t actually need to skillfully evade every attack launched by that fully-grown monster.

He was lucky if he could even get an attack in for each of hers.

“Rahh!!!” he shouted, completing the swing of his fist.

He placed his body weight behind it.

Even if she was up against a being known as a god or a demon, or a human who had trained themselves up to the point that everyone would see them as such a thing, this version of Alice would likely crush them underfoot without them even realizing they had been killed.

But that didn’t matter.

Kamijou did not stop.

No amount of willpower would let him avoid taking hits here. And each time one of Alice’s attacks hit him, critical sounds of destruction came from within his body. Red beads of blood swam through the air and even ordinary pain vanished behind a wave of scorching heat.

But none of that was any reason for Kamijou to falter as he clenched his teeth and fist.

He was up against an extremely deadly power.

But what did that matter when he was going to die anyway?

The prophecy had been made quite a while ago. Nothing he could do would change the fact that he was going to die. Since he didn’t have time to spend on that issue, he was approaching death with each tick of the clock. His fate was the same no matter who won this fight.

That was enough to know that his own life was a secondary concern here.

''Something else mattered more.

Namely, the girl right in front of him. The girl who was feared but also revered by so many. No one was interested in anything other than treating her like a monster, she had forgotten the proper way to lose, and she believed she could make others happy as long as she wielded her great power. And as a result, that lonely girl would lose everything she thought she had.

She was his top priority.

And this wasn’t limited to him.

Aradia, the Bologna Succubus, and the other Transcendents had to know what it meant to leave the Bridge Builders Cabal and oppose Alice. H.T. Trismegistus had stayed by Alice’s side to serve her to the end, but he had also chosen to turn his blade against her when necessary. And Anna Sprengel who viewed Alice as though she was her past self.

None of them were fighting because they could win.

Only the people who had chosen the option least likely to ensure their survival had stuck with Kamijou. And the Transcendents understood just how much of a threat Alice was, so it must have been a much harder decision for them than for ignorant Kamijou.

Even so…

He heard yet another dull impact.

Which meant he had again failed to avoid an attack.

His movements slowed with each consecutive hit. His body felt so heavy. But this was far better than having his body explode, leaving nothing but a stain on the floor.

Kamijou knew he didn’t have luck to thank for this.

Was Alice holding back?

He smiled a little.

How happy it would make him if that were it.

Their fists collided.

Sound vanished for a brief moment.

Creating a blank.

Perhaps some vital lines had been severed inside his body.

His fist felt hot. It may have already broken.

The world seemed to tilt around him.

But he still gathered strength in his legs to keep himself from falling.

Alice’s legs were shaking too. Her shoulders were heaving as she breathed and one eye was unnaturally closed. The eyelid may have been cut.

But she was still on her feet.

This wasn’t about right or wrong and it wasn’t about like or dislike.

Both of them simply refused to back down. No matter what.

So it wouldn’t end. Kamijou refused to die before he was through. He still held his ticket to change destiny.

It would be such a waste if he collapsed before he could use it.

He would stop her.

And save her.

Kamijou Touma forced his pain-numbed body to move and clenched his fist once more.

Another attack came.

Realizing where Alice was aiming, he immediately balled up to protect himself.

To protect his right arm.

If his arm was torn off, ''that thing'' would emerge. He had proven that when he severed the arm himself to summon it against Rosencreutz.

That would work if he was ''only'' interested in defeating her.

''That thing'' may have been the only remaining mystery in this world that rivaled Alice.

But Kamijou had made a decision back then.

He had made up his mind.

He would never use ''that thing'' again. Never against another person. Plus, a little thing like death wouldn’t be enough to stop Alice!!

He took the full brunt of the attack as payment.

He couldn’t see it, but he was pretty sure his back had split open.

He finally heard a rupturing sound within his own body.

It reminded him a lot of a water balloon.

He coughed up blood. Enough to feel like a solid clump.

That didn’t matter.

He refused to collapse.

He hadn’t saved Alice yet. So he would keep fighting until he had. No matter what anyone said – no matter what analysis had been made by the magician smart enough for Aleister to rely on and Anna to fear – whoever remained standing in the end was the winner.

So.

Kamijou ignored the red spilling from between his pursed lips and clenched his broken fist even tighter. He may have been further breaking his bones with his own strength, but he didn’t care in the slightest.

He used his knees to push Alice back a bit while feeling her warmth.

He secured the optimal position while right up in front of her.

Surprise colored her face.

It was the look of a child refused a hug.

He smiled a little.

Because he would never do that.

He swung his fist with all his might.

There was just one sound.

Alice’s fist finally swished through empty air while Kamijou’s found a solid cheekbone.

The impact rang dully out.

The blow actually broke his elbow and shoulder.

Nevertheless, he kept his full weight on his broken fist to the end.

He brought her down.

===Part 5===

“…”

Kamijou Touma was standing.

He had remained on his feet to the end.

Something appeared to have torn through his arm, but he felt no actual pain.

He saw white bone.

The skin and flesh had come away more easily than with chicken on the bone.

Maybe he was hallucinating it.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

He didn’t let it bother him. His sense of pain melted away within the growing heat and he lost all interest in his own injuries. To be blunt, they didn’t matter.

He took a step forward.

“Tea…cher?”

Alice Anotherbible was still down where she had fallen on her rear.

She was trembling.

She may have seen a bit of what she had done. It had come into focus for her. Who could say when it would all “cloud over” once more, but for this moment at least, her vision was clear.

She sounded more than a little dazed. The fully-grown woman spoke with unstable confusion in her voice.

Like she had finally caught on.

“It’s alright.”

Kamijou smiled.

The smile came to him naturally.

“You did enough to deserve that. But now we’re even. Aren’t we, Alice?”

“No…”

The fully-grown woman shook her head.

Like a small child.

Something floated in the air. The teacups and saucers had been flying around weightlessly, but now they vanished into thin air like fading sparks. Everything around them distorted as the illusion inside the girl crumbled away.

Alice’s dream was ending.

Kamijou could sense reality pushing its way in.

It wouldn’t be long now.

He had not put together any kind of response to the prophecy from that absolute being.

But he had accomplished a more important task.

He had saved her.

So.

It was time to pay the price.

“…”

Had it taken a long time, or a short one?

Reality had raised the white flag almost immediately, so maybe this hadn’t been a path that could be measured with time.

So many events had happened in such a condensed time period.

December 24.

In the middle of the Christmas season, R&C Occultics had suddenly risen to prominence and revealed the hidden existence of magic online.

And CEO Anna Sprengel had appeared in Academy City.

She had mouth-to-mouth delivered the body-hijacking St. Germain microbe to Kamijou, infecting him.

December 25.

Anna Sprengel had stood on center stage.

Kamijou had attempted to communicate with the St. Germain microbe infecting his body and had fought Anna using magic despite the side-effect it had on his body.

Kamijou had just barely managed to defeat Anna, but to protect Kamijou’s life, St. Germain had negated himself with Imagine Breaker. This made it a bitter event for Kamijou.

December 25.

Another incident occurred in Academy City that same day.

Defeated Anna was left in Anti-Skill’s custody, but the problem hadn’t ended there. A probability-manipulating spiritual item called the Coin of Nicholas had been spread around Academy City. The new Board Chairman’s plan to quietly correct the city’s darkness was hijacked and Anna easily left her cell.

Kamijou was barely involved in this incident.

But it was very significant that he encountered Alice Anotherbible after that incident full of so much death and defeat.

December 26.

The threat of R&C Occultics was not limited to Academy City. Los Angeles was suddenly engulfed in yellow sand and its tens of millions of residents disappeared. While pursuing this, it was revealed that Anna had caused such a large-scale incident just to acquire a skilled engineer.

At first glance, it looked like an arrogant act that ignored the costs and risks.

But thinking back, Anna had already been mentioning her “king” at this point.

December 29.

But the true center of the world’s problems was not Anna Sprengel.

Anna readily threw out her global IT company to join the Bridge Builders Cabal.

Alice Anotherbible, the mysterious girl at the top of that cabal, caused plenty of trouble for Kamijou in the darkness of Academy City.

This was the true starting point.

Alice had warned him thrice.

She told him he would die if the altered branch was returned to normal.

December 31.

In Shibuya, Kamijou began working to correct his extreme lack of funds. There he found the Bologna Succubus and Aradia waiting for him. Those magicians were known as Transcendents and possessed powers on another dimension entirely. A clash between just those two produced enough overflowing charisma to engulf the entirety of Shibuya in rioters.

January 1.

A building calling itself a consulate for the Bridge Builders Cabal suddenly appeared in District 12, which had a focus on mythology and religion. The greater focus on the idea of Transcendents further showed how unique Alice was.

Alice wanted to provide deadly punishment for H.T. Trismegistus and the other Transcendents who threatened Kamijou’s life, but Kamijou himself intervened, driving a decisive wedge between the two.

January 3.

Kamijou happened to rescue Anna Sprengel after she was captured by Aleister and fled around Academy City with Aradia, who they had happened across. They were pursued by Mut Thebes, a Transcendent in charge of punishment.

This was when Kamijou first heard Anna clearly talk about her “king”.

She wanted someone who would restrain her wickedness and protect her.

But she never had a chance to meet this person. She was doomed to die after being hit by the Shrink Drink, a special spear that borrowed a portion of Alice’s power.

Alice was the only one who could save Anna, but at the same time, the Bridge Builders Cabal was working to bring back a dead magician: CRC, Christian Rosencreutz. But when he was reborn, he was not the man seen in the legends. He obliterated the Bridge Builders Cabal just to stave off boredom and Alice Anotherbible was killed.

January 5.

The reborn Christian Rosencreutz began fighting his boredom.

Kamijou faced that ultimate threat to protect Anna who was on the verge of death in the hospital. As the ring of defenders grew, ultimately Academy City as a whole was working to stop CRC from taking that life.

Once it was all over, Alice got up like nothing had happened to her.

CRC was not the greatest monster.

And today.

It had been a long time.

Yes, a very long time.

Unbelievably long.

This wasn’t about the literal time it had taken.

Far too much had happened over winter break. Kamijou had been exposed to multiple new forms of threat and been badly beaten, but that had built up his unseen heart and soul enough to make it this far.

And.

He had dragged his heavy body far enough to stand before Alice Anotherbible.

He had stood right in front of her.

He could say that for certain.

Everything that had happened had been leading up to this moment.

He had arrived.

All the past storms seemed like a fantasy now.

It hadn’t been pretty and he had been badly delayed, but he had made it.

On his own two feet.

“I’m here, Alice.”

He barely got his voice out.

With all the blood clogging up his throat, he wasn’t sure if his voice was even audible.

“I made it here.”

“You can’t defeat the girl, teacher. If everything had gone as planned and the girl had used her full power, you might have been spared this death ''coming from the outside''.”

Alice could say what she liked, but the winner made the decisions.

That’s what he had been fighting for.

So he could tell her it would be alright.

The girl might not get what she wanted.

If Kamijou died here, Alice’s wish to make up with him would go forever unfulfilled. She had become a world-destroying storm to make that happen, but Kamijou himself had put a stop to it.

But.

He just hadn’t been able to leave her all alone and howling.

“…”

His limit had arrived.

He would die today.

But Alice still had her life. She still had plenty of happy paths left for her. She could meet so many people and surround herself with so many smiles she forgot all about today.

Surely he was allowed to wish for that.

She had been abducted, remade, worshipped, and rejected.

She had appeared free, but she had always been bound by something unseen. She had always been underneath someone’s foot. And no matter how powerful she was, she had ultimately been unable to change that herself.

So on the verge of death, surely Kamijou was allowed to imagine a world where she was happy enough to make up for all that with interest.

Allowed by who?

Not that bastard god.

Kamijou Touma would allow himself that happy wishful thinking.

He would celebrate this ending.

Slowly, fully-grown Alice once more got up from the floor. She stood up.

As if to cling to him.

“You will die if you move any more, teacher. You will die and leave nothing behind.”

“So...what?”

The pointy-haired boy dragged his body along and struggled to support himself.

He faced Alice head on.

The girl seemed unable to move beyond her incessant trembling. She was extraordinarily powerful. She had easily killed the reborn Christian Rosencreutz, who not even all the regular Transcendents working together had been a match for, but she was rendered motionless at the sight of this ordinary high school boy.

It wasn’t a physical matter.

But just this once, Kamijou Touma had defeated Alice Anotherbible.

He was an unfortunate person.

He had lost his memories, been placed in mortal peril more times than he could count, and actually died on occasion. Not even being killed had been enough to end it. There probably wasn’t any real reason why. He just so happened to be there, so he was dragged into it. His life was a series of those coincidences.

It hadn’t started here.

And it had probably happened plenty of times he couldn’t remember.

But.

Even so.

“I…”

He felt the grasping hand of death at the center of his chest.

He didn’t need to hold his hand to his chest to know his heart wanted to rest.

Wounds caused by Alice Anotherbible could not be healed with Good, Old Mary’s resurrection.

The tearing sound inside him was continuing.

Only he could hear it. Were those blood vessels tearing? Or maybe muscles?

It didn’t matter.

Some major arteries and even his heart had probably already ruptured.

But there was something he still had to say.

“…I…”

Maybe it was the blood loss, but the sweat on his brow was unusually cold. His tongue and cheeks were numb.

He had trouble speaking.

He prayed that he would get the words out. Failing to say this before the end would just be too cruel.

But what was he praying to?

Not to god, that was for sure. He knew better than to expect anything from that jerk.

So he chose to pray to himself. To the human being he was. Only he could change the world with his will. He would endure until the end. He just had to think back on the path he had taken and compare this to all that pain and suffering.

A little thing like death was nothing.

If he clenched his teeth, he could keep on moving for a little while longer.

He had a lesson for that girl.

If she understood this, she would be alright.

Alice Anotherbible could probably do anything.

But there were no absolutes for any human.

So he had to tell her.

No matter how extraordinary she might be, if she acted thoughtlessly and carelessly long enough, she would pay a painful price eventually.

And if she took it too far, that price could even be the life of someone she cared deeply for.

Alice could protect herself from anything. Even if she died, she could resurrect herself right away. She was so powerful it was fundamentally wrong to even think about defeating her. But could she protect other people?

Violence took important things from yourself and others.

She could fight and win, but would that even matter?

Had Kamijou gained anything at all when he released the mysterious dragon from his severed right arm and defeated Rosencreutz with it?

Violence was not a valid solution.

He had forever lost a future where he and CRC could smile together.

He had done it himself.

By giving up.

That wasn’t a solution.

He had realized that afterwards.

And he had stopped himself from making that mistake again.

“I don’t…”

So.

If Alice was greater than Rosencreutz – if her power was truly extraordinary – she had to think even deeper about strength and power.

Kamijou was just an ordinary high school boy. He wasn’t arrogant enough to think he was in any position to teach anyone anything. But if Alice realized this for herself, she could stop herself. She could learn to think about ''compromising with'' the wide world around her instead of focusing only on what she wanted.

That was Kamijou’s battle.

There was no avoiding death for him, so that was his one and only win condition.

So he made sure to keep speaking to the end.

Because he had to accomplish that.

He held the fully-grown woman’s face between his bloody hands.

He looked Alice straight in the eye.

And the ordinary high school boy got the words out.

''He made it in time.

“I don’t want to see anyone suffering from even more misfortune than me!! You got a problem with that!?”

From the start, they had both known how this would end.

There had been no changing it.

Alice fell back onto her rear. As if she were backing away from a truth she didn’t want to accept.

She had blood on her cheeks.

The faint red stains left by the boy’s fingers.

What little warmth was left in that blood was fading fast.

“Tea…cher?”

Her voice was scratchy.

It was a definite physical voice.

The voice of her original young form.

But no one answered her fearful, trembling question.

The boy had not fallen.

Whoever remained standing in the end was the winner. So he had refused to fall until he had saved Alice. This proved his resolve more than anything.

===Part 6===

Kamijou Touma was still standing.

He was no longer moving.

His brain, his heart, and everything that provided life had fully ceased functioning.

[[Image:GT Index v10 BW7.png|thumb]]

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{{Toaru_Nav|prev=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:GT_Volume10_Chapter3|next=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:GT_Volume10_Epilogue}}
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The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume2 Opening1

2024-10-20T04:17:21Z

Churronzon: bight > bright

==Opening X-01: Rainy Days Don’t Have to be Boring==
''“At any rate, the map is filled with hotels, hotels, hotels, and more hotels!!”

''“Byahh!! Ligerrrrrrrrr!!”

'''(Opening X-01 Open 04/29 19:00)

'''Rainy Days Don’t Have to be Boring

It was an incomplete Golden Week.

If the office workers used their paid leave well, they could get a maximum of fourteen days off of work, but that meant nothing to the students. They got a few bursts of two or three days off and they could already predict that their mood would quickly grow blue as they switched back and forth between staying up late on their days off and heading to school first thing in the morning on the school days.

On top of that, it was raining.

It was not raining hard, but it showed no sign of stopping anytime soon. That gentle but constant rain had continued almost nonstop since the end of last week. The days repeatedly switched back and forth between cloudy and rainy, so no one could make any plans to head out.

But all of that meant nothing to Swimsuit Girl Aika who was holed up in her top-floor luxury apartment!

Her half-opened eyes looked somehow boundless. Her long brown hair was tied into two slender braids and then tied into two large loops on either side of her head for a variation on the twintail. She almost always wore a swimsuit and used her white liger (a cross between a lion and a white tiger, making a monster 1.5 times the size of a lion) as a couch, but today things were a little different.

Aika had made a fortress out of the luxury apartment building’s top floor, the floor below that, and the roof which functioned as a midair park. She stood on that roof letting the light but unending rain pelt her entire body.

She also wore a baggy T-shirt over her bright green and white striped bikini.

“A genius like Onii-chan isn’t satisfied by a simple swimsuit anymore, but I can win his heart with the wet and see-through effect. The fabric clings to my bodylines and my girly skin color will show through, so no boy can resist a baggy T-shirt over the standard stripes!!”

The earpiece she wore produced a quiet beep.

That meant she had a guest. Earlier, she had received a text saying “We’ll be there soon” from Shiroyama Kyousuke who she referred to as “Onii-chan” (even though they were not siblings, blood-related or otherwise). The fact that Lu Niang Lan, a busty beauty in a modified China dress, would be with him was unfortunate, but Aika kept her thoughts positive. Yes, having those extra-large bags of fat in front of him would emphasize her modest and slender body!!

“Heh heh heh heh heh! I hope you enjoy your position as the potatoes served next to the main meat…no, the onions laid out below the meat, you old hag! Onii-chan belongs to the little sister who can call him Onii-chan!!”

Certain of her victory, Aika walked back indoors with wet and bare feet.

The large and needlessly bright space looked just like the model rooms seen on TV commercials. The showy living room was large enough to hold a normal family apartment and the visitors had already come in using their spare key.

However…

For some reason, Shiroyama Kyousuke and Lu Niang Lan were gasping for breath, soaked with sweat, and leaning up against each other on the sofa bed.

In his sports brand hoodie and track pants, one might think Shiroyama Kyousuke had been jogging, but the beauty in a modified China dress gave off an entirely different impression as she lay sprawled out there. Her breasts smoothly rose and fell with her breaths, the full length of her slender legs stuck out of the dress’s large slit, beads of sweat trailed down her fine exposed skin, and warm breaths escaped her scarlet lips. Altogether, it brought a vision of certain actions to mind.

Shut-in Girl Aika’s face paled.

She directly gave voice to what first came to mind.

“Wh-what…what happened between you two!? What happened in the few minutes it took me to get here, Onii-chan!? D-don’t tell me you’ve stooped to new levels of cruelty by using a shut-in girl’s final stronghold as a place to bring girls for some fun! You aren’t that kind of Onii-chan, are you!?”

Incidentally, the white liger who was her pet, couch, conversational partner, and vessel was as relaxed as a cat curled up in a pot.

“Ah…ueh…auh…”

Kyousuke somehow managed to speak even though he was still gasping for breath and his throat was still blocked up.

“Th-that was all…pant…Lu-san’s fault… She’s the one…pant…that suddenly knocked me out…”

“What are you saying, Kyousuke-chan? Pant…This was all your doing, Kyousuke-chan... Pant, I told you to stop, but you went for it anyway…”

Collapsed on the sofa bed and unable to move, their arms crossed as they pointed at each other’s face and blamed the other.

But none of that put Aika at ease.

In fact, her vision grew dark.

“Wh-what is this perfect synchronization? I feel like something happened without me and there’s no room for me here!”

“I-it should be…on the news before long…”

Kyousuke finally wiped sweat from his brow with a handkerchief and answered from the sofa bed.

Lu Niang Lan waved a hand and used her toes to poke at an attache case on the floor.

“It was a pretty impressive incident, so the stations are probably holding back until they can carefully look over the report and remove anything that would foster social unrest. But then the amateur online news and video sites beat them to the punch and you start to wonder what the point of the TV news even is…”

“?”

Aika tilted her head, so Kyousuke started to explain.

“Lu-san and I were out at A Block. And what’s located there?”

The girl reached for a glass table and grabbed a notebook-sized tablet that had a waterproof cover for use in the bath. She operated it with her index finger and the ceiling turned into a giant projector screen.

It was originally a joke product meant to let her surf the web while lying down. She had taken being a shut-in to the point that going to another part of the same room seemed like too much effort.

She did a search on Toy Dream 35’s A Block and displayed its webpage for tourists.

“The A of A Block is for Airport and it acts as a giant entrance for Toy Dream 35.”

It might be heard to imagine how an entire block could be named after the airport, but it was basically an area filled with duty free shops that sold luxury bags and wristwatches. Overall, it had a chic and mature atmosphere, but that may have come from the people there as much as from the simple urban planning. After all, brand-name bags could be bought there for (a little bit) cheaper than usual, so it tended to be filled with couples(?) that had an unnaturally large age difference.

As she continued her search, Aika found it.

She found another unique trait of A Block.

“O-Onii-chan, what is the meaning of this?”

“Of what?”

“Because of all the foreigners coming from the airport or people who were waiting for a cancelation that never came, A Block has everything from super luxury three star hotels to super cheap capsule hotels. At any rate, the map is filled with hotels, hotels, hotels, and more hotels!!”

“Eh? Ah?”

“Members of the opposite sex vanished into a hotel district…they’re out of breath…and they won’t give a straight answer about what happened… I’m asking what in the world is going on, Onii-chan!!”

“How did looking at a map of A Block make this my fault? I’m having trouble keeping up with the connections of your synapses!!”

“Byahh!! Ligerrrrrrrrr!!”

For some reason, Aika gave a tearful command with Xs in her eyes.

The giant beast had been curled up like a sofa in a corner of the room, but it immediately began to move. All it did was stick out its front paws and stretch its back, but that was enough to demonstrate the threat of its five meter body. It was now the ruler of this scene. Everything was instantly recolored by its presence.

But no matter how large it was, it was still a nocturnal feline. It produced no sound as it walked. Its approach toward Kyousuke seemed oddly unreal and he felt like he was watching an overwhelmingly powerful ghost.

However, the beast did not use its gigantic claws and fangs to tear apart the boy on the sofa bed.

She (it was a girl) approached Kyousuke on Aika’s orders and then…

Lick.

She licked across his cheek with a tongue that looked like a giant rubber spatula.

“Wahyah!?”

Kyousuke nearly jumped back, but the white liger did not care. She used the pad of her front paw to stroke his head and rubbed her tree trunk sized neck against him. She was putting her scent on him to claim ownership.

“Wait, what, eh!? Fur…my mouth is full of fur…ueh!?”

Then Aika exploded.

“Liger…et tu, liger? Are you saying even you’re going to get ahead of me? This love is just like the warring states period. And that means I can throw out all my morals, doesn’t it!?”

“I’m not even going to try to comprehend your synapses. I give up, so…bwah…can’t you do something about this white liger!?”

There was a reason Kyousuke sounded so concerned.

The white liger meant no harm. In fact, she had narrowed her eyes sleepily and let down her guard just like a kitten curled up in its favorite cat bed.

But that did not change the fact that the white liger was a five meter beast.

She weighed between 300 and 350 kilograms.

To be blunt, it was like being crushed below a small motorcycle, so the sofa bed began to creak in protest while Kyousuke was sandwiched between.

“Wait…this isn’t good… Aika, this really isn’t good! And, Lu-san, you can help too. Just someone get this thing off of me!”

“Heh heh heh heh heh. So is this your plan, Onii-chan? You’re going to flirt with the liger too in order to burn me with the flames of jealousy? I understand. I understand all too well. I won’t hold back anymore either. It looks like I have to take things a step beyond the swimsuit strategy!!”

“Kyousuke-chan, you really don’t understand how girls’ hearts work, do you? If you dismissively say I can ‘help too’, of course I’m going to refuse to help.”

Why was Alice (with) Rabbit Shiroyama Kyousuke being crushed by the weight of a midsized motorcycle?

What had led to this?

To find out, let us turn back time a bit and see what Kyousuke and Lu Niang Lan were up to.

Let us see what they were doing in A Block.

===Facts===
*Shiroyama Kyousuke currently has no contract and thus has no vessel to act as a partner. As such, he cannot use the summoning ceremony.
*Shiroyama Kyousuke went to Toy Dream 35’s A Block with Lu Niang Lan of Illegal.
*Some kind of major trouble occurred in A Block. Something big enough for the state-run and privately-owned stations to hold off on reporting it.
*Aika loves her Onii-chan.
*The white liger also loves her Onii-chan.
*But that does not mean their actions will make everyone happy.

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| Forward to [[The_Unexplored_Summon_Blood_Sign:Volume2_Opening2|Opening X-02]]
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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume10 Chapter2

2024-09-28T02:50:22Z

Churronzon: Removed duplicate word

==Chapter 2: Welcome to the Psychedelic – Little_Queen_Wonderland.==

===Part 1===

The District 10 prison contained a maximum-security cell in its greatest depths.

That cell acted as New Board Chairman Accelerator’s headquarters.

“You say you have information on Alice Anotherbible?”

“I do.”

The big screen TV embedded in the wall displayed Mina Mathers…apparently.

She was the self-proclaimed black cat witch he had encountered in the Academy City night once.

“As Academy City’s new king, you must be at least a little aware of the world outside your city’s walls. I won’t ask that you refine your own life force into magic power and construct spells, but you should know there is a mystical power other than Academy City’s espers.”

“So it’s about that side of things, is it?”

“Half the world is covered by something you could never find even when searching using your full authority. It’s simple really. When investigating the science side doesn’t turn up any answers, you should assume you are looking at a product of the magic side.”

Accelerator clicked his tongue.

Maybe it was a problem that he only had the artificial demon Qliphah Puzzle 545 to assist his decisions regarding these things.

As useful as she was, there was only one of her. Which made her an Achilles’ heel.

He needed at least two. Preferably three.

He doubted Qliphah Puzzle 545 would let it go to her head or be corrupted by it, but the greater her importance, the greater the risk of an enemy attacking her. Increasing his options wouldn’t decrease that risk to zero, but reducing the risk to more comfortable levels would be a task for later.

But for now…

“Tell me what you know. I can decide for myself if I believe you.”

“I never said I was handing over this information for free.”

“You’re trying to negotiate at this point?”

An icy mood set in.

The rioters flooding the streets were even now gradually destroying Academy City.

Anti-Skill and Judgment had been issued live ammunition, but even with high-level espers among the rioters, city residents firing on other city residents would only expand the damage to the city.

The only people to benefit from that were Alice and the Transcendents, outsiders who were distorting the city. That would let them destroy the city, and the world along with it, for free.

They needed to be swiftly attacked to shut off that deadly tap.

As soon as possible.

If Mina Mathers was using that crisis to jack up the price for her information, she had some nerve.

Accelerator was the new Board Chairman.

It was up to him what kind of city Academy City grew to be.

“I am not exactly on Academy City’s side. I am not even a pure member of the science side anymore. Thus, I am sharing what information I believe will benefit me to share. I lose all reason to share it if that condition is not met.”

“…”

“Go to Aleister Crowley. You can place me on your blacklist if you like, but not that human. He has already died once in the UK and died a second time to atone for his sins. No sin is greater than death and that human accepted his death of his own free will. I know you are the successor he directly gave his code list to, but you have no reason to treat your predecessor so harshly. In times of crisis, why not go to him for advice?”

“What’s this?”

Out of nowhere, a new voice interrupted the call without Accelerator’s authorization.

A wholly unknown line had managed to access this maximum security prison.

This was the work of a human who, in a way, knew Academy City even more thoroughly than Accelerator did.

He looked a lot different than he had when Accelerator had received the code list, however.

“It looks like the processor I built is troubling you for no good reason. She might act all wicked, but her thought processes were designed to never do anything truly bad. Whatever happens, she will hand over the information regarding Alice Anotherbible in the end. She isn’t like you or me, so rest easy.”

“Aleister. I am currently using what information I have to hold an official negotiation from an Academy City general contact point. I will be fair, so would you kindly back off and stop interrupting?”

“What has you so upset? This isn’t like you at all. People might not like me very much, but everyone can tell how skilled you are. If you prove your skill as Mina Mathers and establish an official channel with Academy City, I’m sure they will hear you out.”

“(Do you not get that my name alone isn’t enough to manage that, you lonely idiot?)”

“Leave me out of this, dumbasses,” grumbled Accelerator.

That inhuman tsundere was a pain in the ass.

“So are you giving me your information or not?” he said.

“Ahem. Fine, I will. But do remember that this is repaying a debt owed by a certain human, not me. This gives me a bargaining chip to use with the new Board Chairman.”

“Mina. I hate to interrupt when you’re trying to sound threatening by lowering your voice like that, but I can hear a baby crying from off camera. You can leave this web meeting and go comfort her if you like.”

“And who’s child do you think that is? Did you think shoving your baby onto a babysitter counted as doing your duty as a parent, you neglectful moron?”

Even as she said this, Mina Mathers was doing something off camera that produced delighted giggles.

And she got back on topic.

“The oldest instance of the term Anotherbible I found was during the early 20th century in the outskirts of London, England. Aleister, you wouldn’t have been there at the time because you had left on your world trip with your wife Rose.”

“You mean something happened in England while I was away?”

“A new trend began at the time. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland became recognized as a grimoire and a theory was formed that you could understand and manipulate the structure of the world if you understood all the hidden meaning written in that book. Of course this ''goes beyond'' the surface text and whatever Lewis Carroll was seeing and imagining at the time. This included ‘decoding’ the text by replacing it with numbers and rearranging or reordering them.”

“I see. Hence ‘another bible’.”

“Yes. Plenty of magic cabals attempted to forcibly decode the bible based on their own independent rules, but here people were doing this with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland instead.”

It was obvious what the unseen magician at the time would have wanted.

A medium that faithfully reproduced Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Magic in the form of a human.

“If you wanted the details to be as precise as possible, there would have been only one starting point you would want to use.”

Needless to say, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was fiction.

Wonderland and Alice did not actually exist.

But with all that in mind, Mina Mathers had an answer.

“Alice Pleasance Liddell.”

Silence followed.

Mina Mathers continued speaking like a machine.

“Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was not originally written as a story to be published for a general audience. It is based on Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, a story the mathematician Lewis Carroll told a girl named Alice and a few others on July 4, 1862. So while the children’s story itself is complete fiction, the heroine was modeled after someone who did exist.”

“Are you saying some magician abducted her and thoroughly modified her, creating the current Alice Anotherbible?”

“If so, it makes sense why the regular Transcendents respect Alice as their prototype or model. They have not actually seen Alice’s skeleton or the arrangement of her organs. They have extracted and duplicated something else – the actual spell that thoroughly modified the girl called Alice and turned her into ‘Another Bible’ – and they have applied it to themselves. That is how they developed their ''divine cosplay spell'' that allows them to wear the appearances and abilities of gods.”

That was Alice Anotherbible’s identity.

She had ''once been'' a perfectly ordinary girl.

The person who had been the model for a children’s story had been remade into a fairy tale heroine.

From reality to story and from story to reality – the link between truth and fiction had become twisted like a Möbius strip.

And a single spell had made this possible.

“Honestly. Fairy tales and children’s stories are extremely useful for creating the mental images needed to focus the mind and enter a meditative state, but how did people get it in their heads that a children’s story points to the truth of the world? I can’t believe someone took it so far they actually kind of succeeded. The very idea is giving me a headache.”

“Don’t act so innocent, Aleister.”

“?”

“I’m sure you’ve already suspected, but you, Aleister Crowley, were the one who strongly recommended people read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for its magical correspondences. Or do I need to cite the exact grimoire and page number in which you said so?”

“…”

“You said an expert in Kabbalah would see the true value of the book, but I suspect you were just saying things. On the same page, you also recommend Dracula, a popular book at the time. You also recommended Maugham’s The Magician, which painted you in a rather unkind light. You went as far as calling it a must-read and introduced it to all your friends. For your own amusement. It is well-known you wrote these things deep in your grimoires, but I am sure you were verbally publicizing them well before that.”

…Accelerator sighed.

It wasn’t exactly unusual for your past to come back and bite you long after you thought you’d left it behind.

But not even the #1 had guided the world to destruction based on jokes and pranks.

“So are you saying an apprentice of mine is behind this?”

“It happened too long ago for that. There are traces of them already being active at the time of your arrival. So calling them your teacher might be more accurate.”

“Heh heh,” someone laughed.

It appeared to be Aleister.

“My teacher, huh?”

“Who would that be?” asked Accelerator.

“Beats me.”

“You expect me to believe you’ve never met this person? Give me a break. We’re talking about whoever taught you magic.”

“There are simply too many candidates for a supposed ‘Teacher of Crowley’. Because I’m just that famous. Be it my parents, my relatives, my schoolteachers, or anyone at the different magic cabals I belonged to, everyone with even the slightest connection to me falls into two general categories: those who want to act like they have nothing to do with me and those who want to take credit for teaching me everything I know. Needless to say, the later category is much larger. The people who knew me directly tend to dislike me, but the people with more indirect connections tend to worship me.”

“…”

“And so, ever since ''my official death'' in 1947, there has been no shortage of magicians the world over who claim to be my teacher. Including modern ones, even though that makes no chronological sense whatsoever. But if this person contacted Alice Pleasance Liddell when she was alive, and not just her preserved corpse, they wouldn’t have been too far off from my time. Still, I have no clue who they might be. The most I can say is they were one of the many skilled magician found all over the world.”

The accumulation of history had its pros and cons.

Accelerator was the new Board Chairman and the #1 Level 5, but this was a different kind of distortion.

“Now, the standard assumption on the magic side is that every magician that came about after I received the Book of the Law from Aiwass in 1904 has been influenced by me to some extent. In the modern era, the concept of the occult has already been ''remade'' by me. Of course, there are probably some cowards hiding in the depths of the world who would disagree out of sour grapes. But at the very least, it is impossible to learn magic today without being even slightly influenced by me.”

“Don’t forget that you also rewrote the definition of science,” said Mina Mathers. “To be scientific does not mean to be superior or more realistic. Before you were born, there was no clear division between science and magic. There was only the pursuit of knowledge of the natural world. For example, during the 19th century, the Golden cabal was seen as a secret salon where academics, poets, actresses, and intellectuals from a variety of industries gathered. Magic was seen as a proper study of the world, not the pursuit of eccentrics who refuse to face reality. Aleister, you so loathed the cabals, you changed those definitions so ‘scientific’ refers to a belief in reality and you spread that new definition around the world to create the foundation of the today’s science-centric worldview. This in turn reduced magic and the occult to toys for stubborn freaks.”

There was such a thing as being too influential. This was the perfect example of how charisma could be a harmful thing.

Did this mean you could not escape Aleister Crowley’s influence unless you hid on the dark side of the moon?

“Hey, I don’t know exactly what they used, but this Teacher of Crowley, whoever they might be, got carried away and screwed it up, right?” said Accelerator. “Can’t you clean up this mess? If you know how they do things, you can’t tell me there’s nothing you can do.”

“There are different kinds of failure,” replied Aleister with a hint of exasperation. Probably because he had seen the fate of the Golden cabal with his own eyes. “If an experiment is a dud, there’s no problem, but that isn’t the only kind of failure. For example, what if someone built an experimental reactor without the appropriate knowledge and they screwed up operating it, triggering uncontrolled nuclear fission?”

“…”

“Alice exists. ''And she was definitely too great a success''. But the magician who created her is nowhere to be found. A magic user capable of creating her would stand out for better or for worse, but there hasn’t been any hint of them. Do you still not get it? This Teacher of Crowley may have been a Golden member I met at some point, or they could be a butcher or pub drunk with no connection to me at all, but whoever they are, they’re long since dead. My guess is, shortly after they completed Alice Anotherbible, they became their own greatest accomplishment’s first victim. They would have been annihilated to the point you could search the world with a fine-toothed comb and never find their remains or even a shred of their thoughts.”

He snorted with laughter.

With the cynical look of seeing a craftsman fall victim to the very torture device they had invented.

That human could see the humor in such things.

Aleister had developed such violent Level 5s in Academy City, but he had avoided having them directly threaten him. If the seven of them had worked together, they likely could have reduced the city to rubble, but despite nearly all of them having some kind of gripe with or grudge against Academy City, they had strangely never done that. The Level 5s might briefly join forces by random chance, but this never lasted long. But who did this benefit most? Had they been ''well managed'' in a way Alice’s creator had failed to do?

At any rate, Alice Anotherbible’s foundation was deeply rooted in the Crowley-style magic known as Magick.

Since the magician who had abducted Alice Pleasance Liddell was not an actual acquaintance of his, he wouldn’t directly understand the spell used, but as the creator of the framework behind Modern Western Magic, Aleister might be able to determine how it worked based on fragmentary knowledge.

There was hope.

That human had abandoned Academy City, so Accelerator was extremely reluctant to place him in a central position that could influence the city’s future, but since this had to do with magic, he would just have to let Qliphah Puzzle 545 keep an eye on things.

But just as he made that decision, Accelerator suddenly looked up.

“Who’s there?”

Several straight lines ran through the thick, explosion-resistant prison wall as it was sliced through, the pieces crumbling away once gravity took over.

That wall was made of the same stuff as the Windowless Building which could theoretically withstand a vector attack by the #1, but it was so easily sliced through from the outside, ''which was in fact the back side''.

“Hey.”

Accelerator stayed where he was.

He let out a growling voice while seated on the bed.

“I asked who the hell you are. If you aren’t answering, it means you’ve got a deficiency of either brains or manners. I’m not going to leave this cell, but if anyone’s stupid enough to come in here with me, I can’t guarantee they’ll leave alive.”

He heard a quiet metallic click. It was the sound of a thin blade returning to its sheath disguised as a cane.

And a black-haired young butler bowed politely beyond the rubble.

“H.T. Trismegistus,” he said.

“…”

“How you run your city is none of my concern. Except if it will anger my Alice and send her on a rampage. That would be rather troublesome. ...As for you two outsiders, common sense says this is the difficulty level you should be considering.”

[[Image:GT Index v10 BW2.png|thumb]]

===Part 2===

Little Anna Sprengel was miffed.

She had been left behind.

And to add insult to injury, Kamijou Touma ''had not disappeared on his own.

In their eyes, was she no different from the calico cat curled up in a corner of the room?

In a hurry to leave the dorm, she threw open the front door, hesitated, and realized it was meaningless. She had no idea where Kamijou or Alice would be.

(Alice Anotherbible’s irregular behavior isn’t that fool’s responsibility alone. He could have blamed me for intentionally derailing her from her position as an ordinary Transcendent.)

Alice Anotherbible was certainly extraordinary.

Even a thorough understanding of the hidden Rosicrucian arts wasn’t enough to defeat her head on.

But there was a way to deal with her.

And sneaking around doing the dirty work needed to make the impossible possible was a villain’s specialty. Had he forgotten Anna had already successfully gained access to Alice while the Bridge Builders Cabal protected her and given the girl an interest in Kamijou Touma like he was a picture book protagonist?

(That fool had better not be so stupid he snuck out because he didn’t want to pressure me to do that kind of dirty work.)

“Argh!! I guess I have to start with narrowing down the possible locations with some divination. Breaking the rules is more my style anyway. And I doubt anyone other than Kamijou Touma and Alice Anotherbible could come up with the correct answer anyway.”

Of course, she didn’t think she could just divine the answer with tarot cards or a crystal ball.

Nothing was that easy when it came to Alice Anotherbible.

But she was a Secret Chief’s priestess and magical knowledge was a rarity in Academy City. What would it mean if something in this city forcibly repelled her search?

That would be where those two were.

Real scrying did not require a crystal ball. Anna used a thick permanent marker to color a magnifying glass black.

“Okay, you had better not get yourself killed before I arrive, fool!!”

===Part 3===

Where was Kamijou’s school?

That was actually a tricky question because he had two schools: his original school that was destroyed by Magic God High Priest and the school he had been temporarily using after that destruction.

Neither answer was definitively correct. No one could work out a logical answer.

Kamijou himself just had to go with his gut.

Just like the storybook girl had wandered Wonderland as her whims led her.

He ended up choosing his original high school.

Academy City’s technology was 20-30 years ahead of the outside world. Magic God High Priest, the Elements, and so many other threats had smashed up the city, but it had been redeveloped or repaired back to its original form in an extremely short time.

Kamijou’s school was no exception.

No one who didn’t know it had been destroyed would think it had been rebuilt. The large school building, the dirt schoolyard, the pool, the gym, and the other additional structures were still covered in construction scaffolding and thick soundproofing sheets, but it was all already complete. It looked a bit like a present waiting to be unwrapped. The usual school was there like usual.

“That’s incredible,” muttered 15cm Othinus from his shoulder.

Kamijou frowned.

Sure, it was impressive, but it was nothing more than science. While she had lost her obvious powers, she was still a Magic God. Was Academy City’s construction technology really enough for her to gasp over?

“That isn’t what I meant at all. But I suppose it isn’t your fault you can’t sense ley line fluctuations and distortions. You will understand once you set foot inside. This is something you can’t avoid if you want to meet with Alice.”

“?”

They arrived at the school’s front gate.

It was getting late at night, but the sliding metal gate was open for some reason.

As soon as Kamijou stepped through, the world changed.

But this wasn’t a visible change in the color or light.

Still, he grimaced as soon as he stepped through.

It wasn’t quite like a bog.

This was much worse. To the point that trying to comprehend it by giving it a name would break his mind.

He had to focus on the costs and his stamina.

He couldn’t afford any wasted effort.

From here on, every step he took would put his life at risk.

He was only a high school boy and he could tell that.

“If Alice wanted, she could have changed the world you see before you in any way she liked,” said War God Othinus from his shoulder. “The consulate in District 12 is a good example of that.”

“I thought the other Transcendents made that.”

“You need to assume Alice can do anything the regular Transcendents can. In fact, her version is probably the original.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Did you really think the Bridge Builders Cabal members created that divine cosplay spell all on their own without any hints to work off of? Remember, these are the people who abandoned their magic names and relied on someone else because they knew they could never achieve their goals themselves. …You can think of the regular Transcendents as custom products created by taking the open-source Alice ''Anotherbible'' and tweaking the details to fit their preferences. Where Alice came from, I couldn’t tell you.”

Othinus spoke harshly, but she was that way about everyone on Earth.

In fact…

“Hm? I don’t sense much scorn in your voice there, god.”

“Because I have no real reason to feel scornful,” readily replied the ''real god''.

This wasn’t about what was correct. They simply used different methods. She spoke like a living national treasure of a dancer appreciating the younger people in a phone video who were simply enjoying moving their bodies.

Apparently that was analogous to the one-eyed girl who had gathered faith and polished her skills until she became known as a god and the Transcendents who had chosen various gods and dressed up as them.

“Do not forget that magic itself is a way of breaking the rules. The world of magic is an absurd place where the kind of decent person who stops when the ordinary methods can take them no further are ridiculed as hardheaded. When a magician senses their power is insufficient, they do not run into the wall of reality and give up – they continue struggling to achieve their goal regardless and this comes entirely naturally to them. …Plus, the top Norse god is a god of deception. Have you forgotten that I became a Magic God by defeating Ollerus and stealing his future and possibilities?”

“…”

“Either way, I’m the person ''selfish'' enough to abandon the world of my birth to obtain an understander. Still, I wouldn’t consider throwing out everything I am inside and out to dress up as a different god.”

This was all on such a large scale Kamijou wasn’t sure what to make of it.

He had never imagined the day would come when the word “god” had any relevance to the real world.

Both as a reliable ally.

And as a very real threat.

“Basically, Alice is an extraordinary being who can build a bridge between reality and any proposed theory or concept, no matter how inaccurate or contradictory it might be. It could be the geocentric model, phlogiston, conspiracy theories about the moon landing being fake, that the Y2K problem would cause the world’s computers to run wild and destroy the world, that neutrinos travel faster than light, or anything else. The Anotherbible provides freedom on a level far beyond even the framework of magic. It might be faster to just say there is effectively nothing she can’t do.”

The 15cm eyepatch girl, who existed here like normal, sighed with exasperation and looked to the school once more.

“But despite all that, Alice decided this was the best shape for this place. That shows a fixation, doesn’t it? It implies that using her all-powerful crafting to alter even a single side path or building corner would cause her to lose all interest in the place.”

“…”

“But whatever shape it takes, this is already Alice’s castle. Human, this world will not be kind to you.”

The density of death was growing.

Kamijou always had to contend with misfortune, but tonight was different.

It was intentional.

This world was designed for someone.

It had been remade for that purpose. If everything, even the unseen probabilities, would bare their fangs against any intruders, what could Kamijou Touma hope to do?

“Prepare yourself, human,” whispered Magic God Othinus.

Had she sniffed this out as a god of war, or as a god of magic and deception?

“Something’s coming.”

===Part 4===

District 7 had a certain iron bridge.

While most main streets were aflood with costumed rioters, that bridge alone didn’t have even a single car driving on it. Although it may have been better to say they ''weren’t allowed'' to.

Only a few people occupied the bridge.

It was Transcendents vs. Transcendents.

Given what spells they had, they didn’t even need to cross the bridge on foot and there wasn’t just one route leading to “A Certain High School” that had become the center point of the world’s distortions.

Still, they had all chosen to gather here.

No one had told them to, but here they all were.

Perhaps making the conscious decision to cross a river acted as a sort of ritual.

“Well, we did decide to help him because we could easily predict this would happen.”

“So from the cabal’s perspective, are we traitors to Alice?”

“These opportunists scattered the instant Alice died and came back as soon as they learned she was alive again. Their word doesn’t carry enough weight to stop the goddess of witches.”

Seeing Aradia give a snort, Good, Old Mary shook her head in her large hat.

“You certainly have taken a liking to that boy.”

“Wha-buh-no- I have no idea what you mean by that.”

“That isn’t very convincing after the stammering.”

“Well, by any normal reckoning, I don’t see how any number of us regular Transcendents could hope to win against Alice Anotherbible ''herself''.”

The Bologna Succubus smiled bitterly and held her hands behind her head.

That much was true.

But their actions didn’t seem to agree.

“Yet here we are. I’d like to take that as our real answer.”

“The fight against CRC actually helped us in a way, Aradia. We no longer need to argue over our stance as individual Transcendents concerning that boy.”

“And I’d like to know why you think I’d agree with you on this!”

“That seems self-evident, you naughty girl.”

“Aye. She’s like the naughty girl next door who tries and fails to put on an intellectual front.”

“Aradia is naughty?”

The final comment from the expressionless brown-skinned girl made Aradia hang her head in despair.

“That’s just too much. Why am I being mocked by the goddess who instantly fell in love with that boy so hard you could practically hear the ‘kyun☆’ sound effect?”

“The fact that the punishment expert isn’t doing anything should be enough to know we don’t deserve any punishment.”

“Hm?”

Aradia, Bologna Succubus, Good, Old Mary, and head-tilting Mut Thebes had gathered to travel toward a certain high school, but they all stopped speaking to look in the same direction.

Because they weren’t the only ones here.

“Which tells me they’re the ones who need a beating.”

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.

Vidhatri.

2nd Saga.

Several other shadowy figures were gathered on the opposite side of the bridge. They were all Transcendents. By abandoning the magic name which had acted as the pillar of their lives, those monsters had dressed up in their chosen god’s appearance and abilities, they wielded powerful spells, and they had gained enough strength to take on the entire magic side single-handedly.

The global power balance had shifted.

The balance just barely maintained by leaving the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in the center of the science side had clearly grown unbalanced.

Then again, the distortion had reached a critical point from the moment Alice Anotherbible remained in this city.

The Bologna Succubus grimaced after seeing one member of the enemy group.

One of them was particularly unpleasant.

“Blodeuwedd the Bouquet.”

“Kyahah☆ Thanks for the shout-out!”

The girl with fluffy blonde hair (who looked around 16 ''if her outward appearance was to be believed'') gave a flirty smile. Unnaturally so.

“What’s an old lady like you doing with twintails and double chignons?”

“You should really count the candles on your birthday cake before calling anyone old.”

She had a beautiful face.

And that was all you could see.

She looked like a teru-teru bozu, or like she was wearing one of the towels that used rubber bands to cover everything below the head during pool class. Her girly silhouette was obscured by a coat-like explosion-resistant suit made by attaching thick copper armor plates to a sturdy cloth.

Or maybe she looked more like an iron maiden.

The original Blodeuwedd was a flower goddess or fairy from Celtic mythology. When the goddess Arianrhod cursed a male god to never marry, an impossibly beautiful but clearly artificial woman was created from flowers and other plants to be his bride. The created woman boasted dazzling beauty, but her internal settings were altered, turning her into a wanton traitor who colluded with a lover to murder her husband. Horror stories of an artificial monster created with too-advanced technology rebelling or running wild were not exclusive to modern SF. That was in fact a historical and traditional genre dating back to BCE times.

This Transcendent had chosen to dress up as that goddess.

And her salvation condition was…

“''Saving all the lonely and unloved,'' wasn’t it?”

“And what if it is?”

“You’re like an animal that inundates people with condescending love and leaves them no room for reprisal. I’ve always hated you because you’re more like a succubus than I am.”

The Bologna Succubus was answered by a smile.

Blodeuwedd may have agreed with her.

“Hwa ha ha☆ Love is meant to come from an outside source. And why shouldn’t I provide you with enough of that sweet nectar you could drown in it? And since one of us has to kill the other anyway, this seems better than sharing tear-jerking stories while we slug it out.”

“On that we agree.”

But that was only Blodeuwedd the Bouquet and the Bologna Succubus’s personal beef.

The other Transcendents had no reason to go along with it.

So…

“Alice has broken.”

She looked to be around 25. She had black hair, brown skin, and a model’s figure with a height of probably 180cm. Her red eyes bent.

Vidhatri.

In Indian mythology, that goddess lived underground and controlled fate in the form of weaving. She always accompanied the goddess of creation, freely controlled the path of the entire world, and just like the goddess she was paired with, ultimately became no more than an alternate name for the top level gods like Brahma and Vishnu due to her great ability. She was a symbol who had been rearranged for human purposes.

This performer had chosen to dress up in that role.

Her icy voice seemed to slice through the air with words alone.

“The first time, it was due to Anna Sprengel’s scheming, but the real damage was done by Kamijou Touma. His ignorance caused Alice to fully shatter. I will not allow him near Alice again. It is a miracle she managed to get back on her feet at all, so I will not let you cause even more damage.”

“In other words,” sighed Aradia.

In place of a broom, she was holding a black and yellow barrier she must have torn away from a railway crossing somewhere.

She rested that on her shoulder and sent over a look containing a generous helping of scorn.

“You’re siding with Alice?”

“Yes.”

“Liar. You’re just afraid of anything happening that could threaten or eliminate the foundation of your power as Transcendents.”

Silence followed.

Which was as good as confirmation.

One weakness of open-source programs was malicious third parties taking advantage of the ability to freely view the internal code to analyze it and develop viruses and malware specialized for that program.

So the Transcendents would be in serious trouble if a third party were to collect Alice, who was their original version. Especially if that third party was one of the ''despicable winners'' like Anna Sprengel or Aleister Crowley. Maybe it would be a poison and maybe it would be a curse, but there was a risk of Alice being used to develop a countermeasure capable of eradicating the entire Alice series of magicians.

Most likely, they were acting now to prevent Kamijou Touma from unwittingly causing such an occurrence.

That would mean the only Transcendent who actually cared about Alice Anotherbible was H.T. Trismegistus. That gloomy, inconspicuous believer in common sense had certainly found a way to make his presence felt. If only it weren’t by being a world-destroying pedophile.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet did not deny her weakness.

“We have our own salvation conditions to worry about. Keh heh heh☆ And we cannot afford to lose our power as Transcendents. For their sakes.”

“And now you’re using them as an excuse, you slut.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

“How about I trample this stubborn dandelion growing from the a crack in the ground and continue on to Alice?”

With a pop, the thick copper coat covering Blodeuwedd the Bouquet from neck to toe opened to the sides like double doors. The thick locks lined up vertically down the front noisily unlocked one by one.

A dazzling light emerged.

Along with a sweet aroma so powerful it was like a thick wall.

The inside of the coat had been turned into a terrarium full of colorful flowers. That garden of eternal spring was contained in a glass container and supported by appropriate amounts of water, nutrients, electric heaters, and UV LED lights.

She herself wore only a frilly apron over her dazzlingly pale skin.

The sleeves extending from the metal coat had only been remote-controlled arms.

“Quite the showy transformation she’s got there,” said the Bologna Succubus.

“She may see that as releasing her true power. We do need to display our divinity or devilishness in an obvious form to convince ourselves as much as anyone, but is this really her interpretation of superhuman beauty? Does she think the amount of exposed skin is the only thing that matters? How vulgar,” said Aradia, sounding icy.

In her pursuit of higher morals in knowledge and miracles, that young witch was not actually used to being viewed in a sexual light (by younger boys), so it didn’t occur to her to consider how her own outfit played into this discussion.

The girl – who looked unhealthily skinny rather than sexy – grinned.

And with all the appropriate pieces present in her appearance, that sweet-smelling person spoke.

“My, my. Have you forgotten what it is we do?”

“…”

It sounded a lot like a crashing wave.

“Ah ha ha☆ Alice isn’t the only one. The rest of us regular Transcendents also have enough charisma for our very presence to distort human society and create new trends. Maybe you could call it a flaw of dressing up as a god. However, I am exceptional in that regard. In this one field, my ability is even more obvious than Alice’s.”

That they were on a bridge over a large river wasn’t enough to explain it.

This noise was unusual.

The dark water of the January night was stirring with no connection to the water or wind current.

Stirring violently.

“I am loved by all living things. And not just people – birds, land animals, bugs, and fish too.”

Something crashed into the large bridge. They were the black bass, bluegills, and other troublemakers of the river environment. They were small and common creatures with nothing divine about them, but tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands had gathered to form a giant wave.

''These lives were so easily manipulated.

Red and silver.

They had enough force and mass to possibly break a bridge weighing more than ten thousand tons.

“What do you think of my Total Courtship?☆”

Using cries, pheromones, dances, and colors, she could seduce any living creature, including humans. Simply put, she was a courtship expert.

Was she already drunk on victory?

Euphoric, Blodeuwedd the Bouquet raised her voice.

“Ha ha☆ Love them, demon of the night. Love every last one of them. But there are plenty of environmentally destructive species that are hated just because there are too many of them!!!”

“Cold Mistress.”

“Agh!?”

Seeing that spell replace her euphoria with pain was quite satisfying.

===Part 5===

Everything set into motion all at once.

Like water and oil bursting from the surface of a heated frying pan.

Several Transcendents quickly moved back to reassess the distance between them, others moved in like arrows to prevent that, and several smaller battlefields formed within the overall group battle.

===Part 6===

A quake-like vibration disturbed the dark river.

Blodeuwedd the Bouquet could make a weapon out of the vast city full of pests and vermin, but she wasn’t the only one responsible.

As the fish rushed in as a great wave threatening to swallow up the bridge from the side, they were stopped by a three-legged object the size of a stadium.

“Tribikos,” whispered Good, Old Mary, manager of experimental tools.

She was facing Vidhatri, Indian goddess of fate. Their eyes happened to meet and she took a breath as their piece of time and space was cut away from the confused battlefield. At times, rhythm and timing meant everything in a chaotic battle. Good, Old Mary was bound by Vidhatri in the same way.

Their clash was inevitable now.

Good, Old Mary addressed the perfectly-proportioned model wearing a red sari.

“Vidhatri, mama is serious. Mama will crush you. So what will you do?”

“Are you sure you want me to take this seriously?”

“Feel free. Mama is a fount of mercy, after all. You decided to hold onto your Transcendent power even if it meant shamefully forgetting all about your salvation condition. Mama may be facing a despicable slut, but it would be downright cruel to kill you before you can even use the trump card you have been greedily holding in reserve.”

The brown beauty suddenly grew more arms.

No, it was more accurate to say she was standing back to back with had a doll of nearly 2m. It was even larger than Vidhatri’s model-like figure. While she was stiflingly captivating and sensual, this was a life-size ball-jointed doll made of a hard, smooth material.

Was she actually wearing it on her back with thick shoulder straps?

It had apparently been contained inside a rectangular bag.

White thread and black hair was tangled around its artificial fingers.

The Indian fate goddess Vidhatri did not exist on her own. She and the creation goddess Dhatri were always depicted as a pair.

By weaving white and black threads, those gods determined the fate of the entire world, making them extremely powerful.

Threads.

Weaving.

And a doll.

Good, Old Mary sighed as she rapidly analyzed these things to predict what her opponent could do.

“A supermodel figure and a red backpack? Those doesn’t fit together at all.”

“This is no more than a leather bag marketed for all ages.”

Good, Old Mary’s vision slanted.

She tasted blood.

Her chest was sticky and red.

“…?”

A bluegill was to blame.

It was one of the tens of thousands of fish Blodeuwedd the Bouquet had summoned half as a joke. Just as a speck of lead could be deadly when moving fast enough, the fish could embed itself in human flesh if it tore through the air with enough speed.

Good, Old Mary grabbed the intruder flopping around while embedded in her chest wound and pulled it out. This felt different from a sharp blade. The open gills and countless scales caught on the wound, spreading it and rubbing in deadly germs.

But something else bothered her more.

How had the fish even made it this far?

She looked up to see the great wall was missing.

The Tribikos.

In the brief time she had looked away, her stadium-sized trump card had completely vanished.

Like it had been nightmarishly spirited away.

“You must understand.”

With the sounds of springs operating, the ball-joint doll Dhatri’s arms split and lots of pulleys and latches emerged. It formed a loom.

Extremely thin pieces of white and black danced about.

They were threads.

No, was some of that her own black hair?

“Vidhatri controls fate and Dhatri creates all things. Those two goddesses determine all that happens through the weaving of the white and black. Good, Old Mary, you may be able to create anything with your alchemy, but I decide how many different options are included in that ‘anything’.”

“I see.”

“I am Vidhatri. When paired with my partner goddess, I control fate and creation. I am the Transcendent who classifies the world based on my preferences and ''saves all of those that meet my preferences.''”

The threads of fate were woven together to create the warp and the weft of the world.

Was this what it meant to confront someone who had control over all things?

“You are the same as mama. You contain a portion of the mystical power you borrowed from Alice, but you have failed to make full use of it. You are no more than an imperfect performer.”

“Say what you like. In this field, Good, Old Mary, I can easily erase your very existence. I must only intentionally omit all mention of you.”

Good, Old Mary didn’t even have time to hear her out.

With the breakwater gone, the fish crashed into the bridge like a silver wave.

===Part 7===

A flapping sound echoed through the schoolyard night.

Something flitted by the right corner of Kamijou’s vision. It was a monster with the body of a lion and the head and wings of a bird of prey.

It was a deadly creature mixed in with the other characters in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

This was the Gryphon.

“!?”

That specialist in swift destruction and cleanup was only released when Alice Anotherbible was bored with the world. He was like switching life to double speed. He had in fact bitten off Kamijou’s right arm at the District 12 consulate.

Kamijou didn’t have time to do anything.

As soon as the great wings spread wide, the trauma surfaced from the depths of Kamijou’s mind. Reflexively holding his hands up to guard himself was an obvious mistake. By flapping his wings and converting the power of the air into forward momentum, the truck-sized Gryphon charged straight toward him.

Kamijou heard a deafening roar.

But he felt no pain.

A pink color sliced sharply through the night air.

It had appeared out of nowhere.

The flamingo bat held back the Gryphon’s massive beak and even slid the enemy’s attack to the side before delivering a powerful blow in return.

The Gryphon was noisily knocked to the ground.

“You?” said Kamijou in wonderment.

He reached out without thinking and the hovering pink bat slipped away from him. He felt like he was trying to grab a leaf in the water.

Maybe it wanted to avoid Imagine Breaker.

Even so, it flew slowly but playfully around Kamijou before clashing with the Gryphon’s talons when the creature attempted another attack. Orange sparks burst into the night air.

The flamingo bat wasn’t alone. Several hedgehogs much larger than real ones were bouncing around near Kamijou’s feet. Shortly after he noticed them, they exploded. More accurately, they formed long swords made of countless spines and they struck. They all rushed in to attack the emaciated multi-armed doll that had appeared. The enemy was made of bones. It was a full skeleton made of a transparent crystal-like material.

Kamijou had seen this during the clash with the dark side on December 29.

Wasn’t that the Executioner that took people’s heads off on the Queen of Heart’s command?

The distance between them was little comfort. That thing did not use its physical strength to decapitate. It took the heads off with an attack more like an invisible curse.

The battle was fought between different monsters found in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Unlike with the Shrink Drink, these had not been converted into a tool by an outside magician – these were the pure and untouched toys. Most likely, a high school boy with nothing but a special right hand going for him wouldn’t have been able to stand up to even one of them. If he had directly clashed with these things, he would have been killed instantly before he could reach Alice herself.

But Kamijou still lived.

Beings controlled by Alice were battling with other beings controlled by Alice.

Maybe this meant she was conflicted.

Regardless, Kamijou wasn’t without allies.

Even if Alice herself was mercilessly attacking the intruder.

“Alice is waiting,” said Othinus, sounding exasperated.

“Yeah.”

“I wonder what the grimoire library is doing. Well, she was specially designed as an anti-magic combat specialist. Since she had her ability to fight directly intentionally stripped from her, I would hope she excels in other survival strategies.”

“Like what?”

“Negotiating herself a position in the enemy group, or making herself so adorable the enemy would prefer to protect her than exact violence on her.”

“…”

“What’s that silent look supposed to mean? Hey, did you just mouth ‘not a chance’? I was providing an optimistic viewpoint to assist with your mental health.”

He couldn’t picture it.

Index was the last person he could imagine doing something so Machiavellian.

Her perfect memory would let her memorize the position of every single playing card or mahjong tile, but he had a feeling she would still lose to a normal person in those games…

On the other hand, there were miracles that could occur because of her complete lack of scheming, but the same could be said of Alice.

Being unable to predict enemy or ally presented an extreme challenge. Especially when it came to rescuing a hostage.

Othinus gave a disgusted look from his shoulder.

“Does she carry the infinite possibilities of a child? Damn her. She’s physically preventing herself from making a choice and limiting herself to one course of action. At this rate, there will be no obvious distinction between enemy and ally. A million organizations and plans will spring forth from Alice and a million armies will clash in a nonsensical battle. Humanity will be dragged into it and destroyed without any say in the matter.”

“We’ll settle this before that happens.”

Kamijou spoke quietly, but with great conviction.

“Alice is only being so aggressive because she can’t trust anyone around her, but that’s because people taught her that the future is something to be feared. I think I was one of those people. I hurt her. So I need to reach her and tell her directly that life isn’t all that bad.”

“But will she listen? Human, have you forgotten that she abducted the grimoire library? Not to mention that your right hand has burdened you with such an unreasonable amount of misfortune. Has your life really been a happy enough thing for you to argue for the goodness of the world?”

“What if I put it like this? Luck is all in how you look at it. Sure I’m an unfortunate guy, but I don’t have to feel inferior to special people like you and Alice. Just because I started a lot farther back from the starting line doesn’t mean I can’t reach the goal.”

That statement carried a lot more weight coming from the boy who had dealt with misfortune for so long.

Because he was the boy who had overcome millions or billions of deaths to slowly approach Othinus during his direct confrontation with that Magic God.

The flamingo bat swooshed through the air and stopped right in front of Kamijou’s face. The hedgehogs exhaled through their noses at his feet. There were also a large caterpillar and piglet he didn’t recognize. Where did they appear in the story and what did they do? He wished he had read more of that story.

They wordlessly told him they would watch his back.

But that must have been one of Alice’s opinions.

The gym noisily split apart from within. An enormous fluffy cat emerged. It gave a displeased growl and glared at Kamijou with open hostility. It was shaped like an adorably round pet, but it was the size of a kaiju. Kamijou felt something other than fear crawling along his spine. His pride and dignity as a person were gone if he was slowly tormented to death by that thing’s kitty punches.

Humor felt horribly out of place when combine with death.

This one was different. It was clearly far more powerful than the others.

Kamijou gulped.

“What is that? The cat in Alice is, um…what was it again?”

“Do not become the kind of person who needs his phone to know anything.” Othinus sounded exasperated. “That’s probably Dinah, Alice’s pet cat. Butterflies and birds talk like normal in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but Dinah is the one being who is nearly invincible and unbeatable. She only appears in the parts of the story that take place in the real world, but she possesses such deadly power that the other characters tremble in fear and run away at the mere mention of her name.”

This was another opinion.

It was a very real thing Alice thought.

There was definitely a part of Alice that wanted to kill Kamijou.

But there wasn’t time for fear.

Kamijou hadn’t been unfairly dragged down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. He had chosen for himself to set foot in this deadly world.

“Hm, so her coat is a mixture of black and white.”

“Is that important?”

“As much as Alice bragged about Dinah, she never mentions what type of cat she is. Since Dinah is caring for a white kitten and a black kitten in Through the Looking Glass, you can infer she is one color or the other, but this appears to be using the idea that Dinah provided both kittens’ colors without needing the father’s help.”

“Is that really so important when a giant cat is about to kill us!?”

Index was here too. And had been for far longer than Kamijou.

And more than that, was this really what Alice wanted to create and proliferate?

“This is no more than the dolls and toys controlled by mere fragments of thoughts. We have yet to see the real Alice Anotherbible, human!”

“Yeah, I know. Alice is waiting for me. That’s why I came here, so I’m not turning back now!!”

===Part 8===

Alice was inside the school building.

This high school had been destroyed, but no one could match the construction technology of Academy City, the city that once constructed a space elevator in almost no time at all. Once the soundproofing sheets were removed, the building would be ready for classes to begin.

This was the pointy-haired boy’s high school.

Did Alice have a reason for choosing this location?

Not even the young butler who had served her for so long could tell what she was thinking. She was a great individual. H.T. Trismegistus always pursued common sense, so perhaps she had always been beyond his ability to predict.

“This place will soon change into a place more suited for Alice.”

H.T. Trismegistus gave a rectangular protein bar a skeptical look before finally tossing it aside.

Grimoire Library Index was with him.

Alice apparently still wanted the hostage alive.

“At this point, I doubt it even matters if Alice wants it or not. She is the whole of the Bridge Builders Cabal. Alice’s presence appears to have put the people of this city into a sort of high. This will probably eventually spread beyond Academy City. And the resonance from person to person will spread Alice’s garden.”

The young butler wobbled a bit to the side.

A red liquid flowed from his tailcoat’s sleeve to his fingertips.

Where had he gone and who had he fought since Index last saw him?

Regardless, H.T. Trismegistus had a smile on his face.

“It shouldn’t take long for the world to be dyed in her color.”

“Are you saying the world will be flooded with the Gryphon and Executioner I saw before?”

“Maybe so, but that is a minor issue.”

He sounded confident.

“As long as CRC is reborn.”

There was a hint of intoxication in his voice.

“If I can only bring back Christian Rosencreutz properly this time, common sense says he will save the world. As hard as it is to accept, his identity and real name are a trivial matter. I only need to prepare myself to accept his true meaning.”

“You can’t complete that large scale rebirth ceremony on your own.”

“As long as I have Alice as the prototype, I can create as many regular Transcendents as necessary. But aside from that, once word of Alice’s survival gets out, the scattered Transcendents should regather. I can hold an audition to decide whether to reuse them or to train up new performers.”

“…”

No matter how you sliced it, the Bridge Builders Cabal was built around Alice. The Transcendents had scattered after learning of her death, so the return of their “Another Bible” would draw them back in like iron sand to a magnet.

Without any thought to what that would cause.

After all, Transcendents were the magicians who had been unable to make a decision under their own responsibility, so they carried no magic name and instead dressed up as gods while leaving the salvation of the world in someone else’s hands. They were a group with no self initiative. Which wouldn’t be too much of a problem if not for the great power each of them carried.

“But that won’t work,” insisted Index.

The young butler glared at her, but she glared right back.

“You must know that already.”

“Know what exactly?”

“You can bring CRC back with your own knowledge. That isn’t a reason to want or be afraid of losing the knowledge of the grimoires in my head.”

“…”

“You’re afraid of Alice,” stated the nun.

Wasn’t one of her duties to identify people’s inner worries from the things they said?

“You aren’t certain she is ''the same'' Alice Anotherbible as the one you used to serve. That’s why you keep leaning on your past successes. Because at least until you brought back CRC, your cabal was winning. You were in a position to make decisions for the entire world. So you’re trying to turn the clock back to that time so you can stay on the rails of success this time around. Even though that isn’t actually a real option.”

“Did no one ever tell you libraries are supposed to be quiet?”

“I don’t know ''the real reason'' you captured me. Maybe you want a spell to determine if Alice really is still Alice and maybe you know she’s broken and you want to use my grimoires to fix her.”

“I said shut up.”

===Part 9===

Several thick shockwave-like impacts rang out in quick succession and the flamingo bat crashed into the flower bed alongside the walking path.

It hadn’t even bought them a few minutes, but it was enough.

Kamijou thanked it and tackled his shoulder into the glass entranceway door.

It broke shockingly easily.

Unable to stop his momentum, he tumbled inside, where the world changed yet again.

The change wasn’t visible.

But all sound from outside was shut out.

The dark school building was so silent his ears ached. He had shattered the glass in the entrance door, but he doubted he could have returned to the visible schoolyard if he tried. He had a feeling he would be ''deflected or thrown back.'' Not that he had any interest in testing this theory.

The presence of Imagine Breaker suddenly felt a lot less significant.

It was a reference point for the world.

And so it could negate any and all illusions.

But that meant it had no effect on anything that could distort even that reference point.

For example, his right hand hadn’t been able to destroy the infinite worlds created by Othinus.

Alice could absorb the world to that extent.

She simply hadn’t done so before now.

“What...is this place?”

Everything looked normal, but that was no reason to relax.

Kamijou felt like something was lurking on the other side of an invisible barrier.

Something he couldn’t see and that spelled doom if he ever confirmed its presence.

He sensed that collection of terror.

Most likely, not even the pursuing Gryphon and Executioner could enter here.

Not to mention the flamingo bat and hedgehogs who had taken his side.

''Had they been deflected or thrown back''?

Again, he had no interest in testing that theory.

He sighed once, got up, and faced forward.

“Okay,” said Othinus from his shoulder. “This looks like a greater challenge than Crete’s Labyrinth containing a bull-headed monster, but what’s your plan?”

“I suppose there’s no point in trying to predict where in the school Index is being held… That wouldn’t be Index’s choice and Alice’s own preferences wouldn’t come into it. So our best bet is probably predicting Alice’s preferences and going where we think she would be.”

“And where exactly would that be?”

“My classroom,” replied Kamijou without delay.

This wasn’t logic – his own gut instinct was enough. Where would little Alice most want to go in a school she had never before visited? That question was enough to reach the answer. And this was a method only Kamijou could use.

Several female voices whispered from the ducts in the ceiling. A gaze which spoke volumes peered out from the gap in the metal door to the fire hose. When Kamijou turned to look at the janitorial locker or a gap in the wall he had glimpsed out of the corner of his eye, something small skittered out of view.

So much was making its presence known, but it was all strangely ephemeral.

He felt like his mind would break if he didn’t stay strong and tell himself those things really did exist. He had to accept it as is and not question it. Logic was an impediment here. Once he started wondering if something was a hallucination dreamt up by his mind, he would end up circling forever in the same place. He would be stranded in a 1m square.

Othinus spoke up in partial exasperation.

“This is just like the flamingo bat and the Gryphon. They were more obvious, but the presences and scenery around us are also being controlled by Alice’s inner conflict.”

“…”

“Human, if Alice wanted to invite you in, she would only need to come out herself. And if she wanted to reject you, she could have turned the doors and windows into monsters or just created a thick wall. She’s hidden and created several suspicious locations to get you lost, but there is a proper path, isn’t there? That proves she hasn’t settled on a plan. …That she can create all of her different plans at once shows how scarily powerful she is, though.”

Kamijou heard a solid thunk.

It came from the darkness.

This one was a footstep. His heart naturally raised the alarm. A black-haired young butler appeared. It was H.T. Trismegistus.

“Hey,” complained Othinus. “Stop lurking in the shadows. I know Alice leaves more of an impression, but we just about missed you. Anyway, are you the Trismegistus we saw at the consulate before? Or are you one of the understudies?”

“Common sense says I can leave that up to your imagination.”

With a creaking sound, the wallpaper peeled away.

Mice emerged.

They were the size of sports bags and there was an entire swarm of them.

What meaning did those characters have within Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland? Kamijou didn’t have time to think about it.

A pleasant “slap!” rang out.

It happened too fast for Kamijou to see.

He simply noticed a flash of light from the young butler’s hand and then the hunks of flesh split in two like some kind of joke. There was no blood. They lost all color, became dark shadows, and faded into nothingness.

It could be hard to tell how impressive that had been, but he had been attacked by dozens of beings on the same level as the flamingo bat and the Gryphon. He could probably kill Kamijou on the spot with ease.

“…”

“This way.”

The black-haired butler turned around.

Apparently he was leading Kamijou somewhere.

“Unlike during your battle against Rosencreutz, you should not expect any support from the upper levels of this scientific city this time. I had a feeling they would trouble Alice, so I attacked them at the very top.”

“Wait, but the Board Chairman right now is- you beat him!?”

“I did not need to win,” said H.T. Trismegistus. His presence here alive was enough to know how that had turned out. “I only needed to restrict his movements for the time being. Fortunately, I noticed he is receiving electronic support from his choker. Destroying the nearby communications equipment and other electronics to create signal noise and then burying him in rubble was enough to immobilize him.”

Kamijou gulped.

H.T. Trismegistus really was a Transcendent.

''Anyone who knew the #1 knew that plan was much easier said than done.

The very ability to act on a plan when faced with him was unusual.

Was this H.T. Trismegistus’s true power?

Or had Alice Anotherbible linked to ''something'' that distorted the world?

While walking through a hallway with whisperings, mutterings, and rustlings beckoning toward the various gaps, a sharp light would occasionally flash from H.T. Trismegistus’s hand. The sword drawn from his cane easily sliced through the monsters wriggling out from the gaps in the walls and from behind posters, so Kamijou nervously followed after him.

Should he really have been killing those things?

After all, wasn’t everything here – enemy or ally – being subconsciously controlled by Alice? Those were the raw toys – no reasonable magician had remade them into proper tools like the Shrink Drink. They were on the same level as the “Drink Me”. Kamijou recalled a column in a corner of a textbook telling of an overstressed child causing the poltergeist phenomenon in the small territory of their home. What did it mean for Alice when a third party cut down and eliminated part of her inner conflict?

H.T. Trismegistus remained entirely composed as he spoke.

“Common sense says this should go without saying, but I am not your ally. I have always sided with the Killers when it comes to you and nothing has changed there. You do not fit my salvation condition and provoking Alice will only further distort the world.”

“Then why are you helping me?”

“Are you incapable of using common sense?”

The young butler sounded exasperated.

He smiled thinly as he continued.

“Common sense says the most logical way to swiftly and surely take your life is to have you meet Alice Anotherbible as soon as possible.”

“…”

“I see you do not deny this.”

His words were polite but as sharp as any blade.

What exactly was Alice to this butler?

“Common sense says you did this. And as a result, Alice was stupefied to the point she left herself undefended, allowing Rosencreutz to kill her. It all leads back to you. …What will happen when Alice sees you now? Nothing could be more obvious.”

They climbed the stairs.

They avoided the clear slime dripping from the ceiling and arrived in front of one of the many doors lining the hallway.

That door led to Kamijou’s classroom.

It was a perfectly ordinary door that would open when slid to the side.

But it carried more weight than an audience chamber where a king waited.

“Please enter,” was all H.T. Trismegistus said.

It felt like something from a dream.

Othinus had been calling everything into question before, but even she had gone quiet now.

Kamijou felt strangely compelled to continue.

This path was like a contradictory nightmare where he created the very thing he did not want to see.

Invisible rails had been laid out before him, so he could not leave this course.

And he didn’t even have a chance to find this strange.

He should have known opening this door would lead to grave danger. Not opening it was always an option, or he could wait to open it until he had worked up sufficient resolve and made ample preparations.

Nevertheless, Kamijou stood before the sliding door.

He grabbed the handle and opened it.

Like it was nothing.

===Part 10===

As soon as he slid the door open, he heard a sharp “pop!!” directly in front of him.

He immediately ducked down and froze up as something grazed his spiky hair.

He hesitantly grabbed some of it to find it was colorful streamers.

The scent of gunpowder came from the conical party popper in the little girl’s hands.

“Tah dah!!”

[[Image:GT Index v10 BW3.png|thumb]]

Alice Anotherbible stood there.

Her beaming smile was so unchanged Kamijou could scarcely believe it.

She was smiling.

Yes, Alice had a face.

That shouldn’t have been unusual, but it clashed with how he had last seen her.

The classroom looked normal too. The desks were lined up in orderly rows and there was no graffiti on the chalkboard. Had she been politely waiting for him here? While wondering which of the desks was Kamijou’s?

“Teacher, the girl is glad you made it!!”

On that signal, the lights came on.

That wasn’t limited to the classroom. Lights filled every window in the building, the gym that had supposedly collapsed when enormous Dinah made her appearance was enveloped in light, and the outdoor lights illuminated the schoolyard and pool.

The school had returned to life.

No, the new term had yet to start, so it was more accurate to say it breathed its first breath.

''Dammit, Anna. I thought you said Alice would be asleep. But here she is wide awake like an excited kid on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve.

Or had ''the'' Miss Sprengel’s prediction been so wrong because of Alice’s power?

Yes…

“Al...ice?”

“That’s right.”

The little girl responded with a volleyball-sized hole in the center of her face.

The classroom behind her was visible through the hole and it was impossible to tell where her eyes or mouth were, but she still spoke the same as always.

“Ah ha ha! Is something the matter, teacher?”

“…”

Yes.

Come to think of it, why had they been so sure Alice had broken after having her head fatally crushed?

Because she killed Christian Rosencreutz?

Because the headless girl had cackled?

Had everyone forgotten that Rosencreutz killed her first? Was it that strange and incomprehensible for someone to consider taking revenge on the person who killed them if he was walking around free and unpunished? And forget niceties about the emptiness of revenge. In the moment someone achieved their vengeance, wouldn’t anyone laugh at being freed from all that pressure?

Alice was normal.

She had simply done some physically unusual things like getting up after being killed and tearing through someone with her hands. But the thought processes leading to those extraordinary actions were entirely ordinary.

Kamijou did still have a question.

(But why is Alice here?)

“The girl could have gone home and sulked, but she couldn’t just leave you, teacher. So she came to give you a piece of advice!”

“Advice...for me?”

“Yes!”

When the grotesque girl nodded, her adorable face had returned.

Kamijou didn’t know which version was correct.

It was possible he had never actually seen her ''real face''.

“Teacher, the time has come.”

“?”

“The predetermined limit is approaching. Do you not remember what we said? The girl already told you what would happen.”

“…Wait.”

He had been wrong.

He had misread this.

Alice Anotherbible was the same as always. In fact, why had it seemed strange for her to do bizarre things? Had he ever once been able to determine the true meaning behind any of her whims?

''It was normal for her to be unpredictable.

If Alice wasn’t behaving normally, it wasn’t something inside her that was responsible. Something in the world outside her was making her behave that way.

She was concerned.

Uncharacteristically so.

Then what was causing it? She knew what was rushing her and making her act this way. That meant this wasn’t an unknown phenomenon – the answer already existed in the past.

Kamijou had stepped on a landmine.

But when?

“Did something happen when I was fighting Rosencreutz?”

“Nope.”

Yes, it wouldn’t have been when he fought Christian Rosencreutz. Alice was already dead by then, so for better or for worse, nothing could have occurred between her and Kamijou then.

Because he hadn’t arrived in time.

Because he hadn’t saved her.

If Alice wasn’t going to accuse him for that, then it wasn’t that either.

“Then was it when we stole the Predator Octopus and-”

“Nope. What even is that?”

For the same reason, it couldn’t have been when he was fleeing through Academy City with Anna Sprengel and Aradia. Mut Thebes and the Shrink Drink that borrowed a portion of Alice’s power had been a threat, but Alice had already been in a daze by then. In all likelihood, she had been far away working with H.T. Trismegistus, Good, Old Mary, and the rest of the Bridge Builders Cabal to complete the ceremony to resurrect CRC.

Alice had filled the Shrink Drink spear with her power before all of that.

In that case…

“If it was before that, was it at the consulate?”

“Not even close.”

The Bridge Builders Cabal creating their consulate in District 12 had been a major turning point.

Alice had cried there.

Because she and Kamijou had definitively parted ways.

But Alice had been hurt there, not Kamijou. Since she had so readily forgiven him here, that wouldn’t be the root of the problem.

The current problem came from elsewhere.

“Then does it go all the way back to Shibuya?”

“Buzz. Wrong. The girl really wanted to visit Japan’s Shibuya.”

Before that would mean Shibuya on December 31, but that was meaningless. Only regular Transcendents like the Bologna Succubus, Aradia, and Good, Old Mary had appeared there. As the only person (supposedly) capable of controlling Alice, the Rescuers and Killers had fought over what to do with him, but Alice herself hadn’t been present.

Then.

Was it even earlier?

“Hold on. You don’t mean…?”

“''It was when we first met.''”

December 29.

A series of incidents had started with an accident involving Overhunting, a prisoner transport train carrying several dark side criminals.

That was when Alice had first wielded her power in Academy City.

What had happened between her and Kamijou then?

“The girl asked to make sure. She didn’t do this against your will. You told the girl to do it and she told you it was a bad idea, but you made the final decision. Which is why the girl asked you if that was what you really wanted.”

On that day, at that time, Alice had tried to forcibly alter the structure of the incident. To create a resolution with no deaths despite several dark side monsters being on the run, she had ''forcibly created a false truth'' in which the original culprit was Frillsand #G.

''“Now.”

''“Please guide the girl, teacher. She wants to ''go on an adventure'' inside you.”

Kamijou had rejected it.

He had told her to bring back the real truth, no matter how harsh it might be.

''“Then return everything to the way it was, Alice. If I use your power like this, I can never truly reach the end.”

''“Umm, are you sure you want that?”

That was when he had said it.

“Do you remember now?”

Some future decision wasn’t going to determine the ending.

He had long since passed the final branch.

Yes.

''“You will die.”

''“That doesn’t change my answer.”

He had said it.

There was no denying it.

On the very first day he met Alice Anotherbible, Kamijou Touma had said it himself. He had known Alice was dangerous, but he had rejected her idea and changed course. He had ignored her advice and demanded it.

When that horrific incident had ended, he had assumed he had gotten through safely.

But he had been wrong.

Alice had never said ''when'' he would die.

It was a prophecy.

Like Nostradamus, astrology, a dream that comes true, letting a spirit possess you to answer questions, or having an aquarium octopus predict the results of soccer matches.

It didn’t really matter what.

It could be scientific or not and ''it could even violate the rules of magic''. If the theory had been proposed at any time throughout history, Alice could build the bridge to make it real. Once a ridiculous theory began to operate, she could toy with it until it was hers.

It may have been less concerning if she had said she simply knew it to be true with no reason behind it. Because no matter how often someone’s intuition was correct, it could always be wrong.

But that excuse didn’t exist here.

The logic behind it was nonsensical, but it did exist.

If Alice said it would happen, then it was guaranteed to happen.

Why had he let himself relax?

She had never said a single word about what hour, minute, second, or rotation of the Earth it would happen on.

Now was still an available option.

Alice’s prophecy was not over yet. The predetermined outcome was still coming.

“…”

Then there was nothing more he could do.

Struggle all he wanted, he couldn’t recover from taking the wrong turn so long ago.

Kamijou Touma’s life had been over from the day he first met Alice.

Their difference in power was just that great.

Of course, Alice hadn’t intended to harm him.

He had chosen it himself. She had warned him not to, but he hadn’t believed in the absoluteness of her prophecy, he hadn’t given much thought at all to his own life, ''and he had simply assumed everything would work out the way it always did.'' Even though things were different this time. If he had known then how extraordinary Alice was, he never would have seen it that way.

But a choice was a choice.

He had already used up his one and only ticket.

He had walked through the crossroads, so there was no way left to avoid his predetermined death.

===Part 11===

Did you think that statement didn’t mean much?

It meant more than anything.

Alice Anotherbible’s power is absolute. That does not apply only to direct violence.

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Toaru Majutsu no Index:GT Volume11 Chapter3

2024-09-25T00:29:15Z

Churronzon: Removed duplicate word

==Chapter 3: A Single Lie, A Single Answer – Seat_the_Only_One.==

===Part 1===

The situation had changed.

Anna Kingsford.

That absolute safe zone had been shaken.

No one was perfect.

No one was flawless.

…That should have been obvious. And since Kingsford had seemed that way until now, wasn’t it natural to suspect she was hiding something?

''Was she a wholly good person?

''Or was she a person who only let her good side show?

Stay calm. That would be dangerous in a different way from Rosencreutz who didn’t hesitate to let his dangerous and ugly side show. Kingsford was obviously hiding her true intentions. She kept everything perfectly clean, not allowing even the slightest stain or mistake. Why had he accepted what she said when it was more suspicious than a chemical bleaching agent?

He kept telling himself not to trust anything, but he had still entrusted everything to Kingsford.

He had been reunited with Kingsford and Rosencreutz.

And he had encountered this giant phenomenon called hell.

Had he actually made any effort to organize the information in his mind and come up with an explanation for it all?

Kamijou did not know what Anna Kingsford had actually done while she lived. He had a vague impression of her being with Aleister and Miss Sprengel in Shibuya and Academy City and giving them advice, but he had not been directly involved with any of that. So he had no chance at all of guessing what she had been doing behind the scenes.

She had simply guided them toward victory in the battle against Christian Rosencreutz.

And she had simply guided them toward victory in the battle against Alice Anotherbible.

…But could anyone actually explain why Kingsford lent a helping hand and what she had gained from it?

Kamijou couldn’t see even a hint of an ulterior motive there.

Which made her look like a good person without even the slightest dark side.

“CRC…” said Anna Kingsford.

Always a step ahead and still with her back turned.

Or to put it another way, keeping her face hidden from Kamijou.

“❌, I should call him Johann Valentin Andreae who took on that name and became one with the legend. Now, he did ❌ manage to live for 106 years and he could not resurrect himself 120 years after his ☠️. He extended his life as Rosencreutz, but eventually hit a limit and met his end as a human in 1654. He never managed to destroy the Rosicrucian illusion he had created and he ☠️ed wracked with disappointment and a grudge toward the people around the 🌍 who refused to see the truth.”

“…”

“Once Rosicrucianism had truly left its owner’s control, the term was free for anyone to use. New 🪄 cabals could give themselves clout by claiming to be the legitimate descendant of the Rosicrucian cabal and ❌ one could actually prove them wrong. Plenty of 🪄 cabals with nothing to do with Rosicrucianism used the title too. That is one reason it mutated into a massive collection of 🪄al methods that gathered spells and spiritual items from all over the 🌍. For better or for worse, it was used as the foundation of a wide variety of cabals.”

Her words flowed smoothly.

“This includes theosophist and Hermetic societies, the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, and the Golden cabal created by my students Westcott and Mathers, which went on to be known as the 🌍’s largest 🪄 cabal. The extent differs, but ❌ one of them escaped the influence of CRC who had been sent out into the 🌍 by Johann. Miss Sprengel seems to have felt guilty for using the concept for her disguised life, but she need ❌ have. Because there was ❌ true Rosicrucian cabal. Her guilt over calling herself their true descendant despite her lack of knowledge was entirely misguided. …Our efforts were wasted as we poured our strength into true emptiness while trusting that the foundation could be an illusion as long as we could save the 🌍 that way.”

This was news to Kamijou. He probably would have never learned this if he hadn’t been taken to hell along with these extraordinary experts.

Come to think of it, hadn’t Magic God Othinus sacrificed her eye or life to receive terrible knowledge after mastering her path?

High Priest, Nephthys, and Niang-Niang had done the same.

But…

(Why?)

Kamijou had a question.

His desires had gained visual form in this hell. Rosencreutz’s – no, Johann’s – past sins had been revealed.

But he hadn’t seen anything from Anna Kingsford.

Hell hadn’t reflected any of her inner thoughts, nor had she revealed her past or objective.

(Has she been ''avoiding that''? Rosencreutz’s surprising truth came as a shock, but why were we shown that? It doesn’t seem directly related to our jailbreak from hell.)

In that sense, Kamijou needed to dig deeper on Kingsford.

And if this massive soul-processing device called hell wanted to prevent a (from its perspective) illicit jailbreak, reading Kingsford’s mind and calling up some past trauma would be a great way to obstruct them.

Yet that hadn’t happened.

That seemed odd. And unnatural.

When he looked at it rationally, Kamijou Touma realized he didn’t know Kingsford’s overall intentions, or even the slightest flaw, like what food or genre of music she disliked.

She was perfectly and flawlessly good.

That was all he could see there.

There had to be something more to her.

He just didn’t know if that something would help him or hurt him.

(But…)

If so…

Kamijou had been guided deep into this unfamiliar world. He wondered if this was what it felt like to board a strange taxi in a foreign country where he didn’t know the language. He knew the driver was dangerous, but he really didn’t want to be abandoned in the middle of the jungle or desert. Even if they were a dangerous criminal, he had to pretend he was still fooled and wait until they arrived back in human civilization.

Their destination was the depths of hell.

But what did Kingsford gain by guiding Kamijou’s soul there?

Why had she gone to the trouble when he had already died and would disappear all on his own?

(If I only knew her ultimate objective, I could work backwards from there to escape her plans.)

He could only pray this wasn’t a case of a high school boy being unable to understand the thoughts of an expert.

And was their travel companion his one and only trump card here?

Christian Rosencreutz.

As terrifying as he was, he was still an expert. He should be able to properly determine the logic behind Kingsford’s actions.

===Part 2===

Lots of legs grew from the ground.

The ground was covered in them.

“Umm.”

“This is ❌ an unusual sight in hell. This is where the simoniacs, sinners guilty of simony, are punished.”

The glasses woman provided an explanation, but the high school boy had no idea what simony was. The sight was more surreal than frightening. With the victims flipped upside down with only their legs sticking out, it reminded Kamijou of a scene from a very famous mystery movie, but there were just so many of them. It went beyond looking like an aquatic performance done in a pool and looked more like some kind of farmland.

“🔥 burns at the bottom of the pits to burn the sinners’ heads while they are never able to escape.”

“That’s a lot more horrific than I was expecting!”

“We are approaching the bottom of hell, after all. We will be 👁️ing more facilities designed to punish more serious sins.”

But all Kamijou could do was shout.

He tried grabbing one set of legs and tugged on it like it was a daikon radish, but the legs started thrashing wildly. He heard a sound like something thin peeling away, a tremor ran through the legs, and they stopped moving. Kamijou felt like he had only made the situation worse for whoever that was.

He realized he had touched them with his right hand, but they hadn’t disappeared.

What did that mean?

(It’s probably bad if I get too accustomed to the cruel scenes here in hell.)

He felt like his common sense and the ordering of events was breaking down, just like in a hell.

If he couldn’t help those people, this place left him with only guilt. They couldn’t take a break, so Kamijou’s party continued across the simony punishment zone.

“Another river,” muttered Kamijou.

That was something he had seen a few times already.

“The Rivers Acheron, Styx, and Phlegethon. Many rivers flow through hell. The idea of a river forming the boundary between life and ☠️ is ❌ unique to the 🗾ese Sanzu River. I 💭 this is the Phlegethon, but this is ❌ the original river. It should be red and flaming.”

“You don’t say,” said Kamijou offhandedly.

He was in fact listening very carefully.

Everything she said held so much more weight after Rosencreutz’s warning.

(Come to think of it, why does Kingsford know so much about the structure of hell?)

If you lived an honest life so you could go to heaven, you wouldn’t need to study how hell works. And Rosencreutz himself had said god didn’t give all that much thought to hell compared to heaven, which allowed people to imagine it in so many different ways.

Yet Kingsford knew so much about it.

Why?

And she had said the Qliphoth was a map of the realm of ghosts and curses. If she had gone to the trouble of studying that, she might be an expert in that sort of field.

She had learned it because it had felt necessary to her.

And if she knew more about it than anyone, she might have acted on that knowledge.

Kamijou was curious, but if he directly asked her about it, wouldn’t she just dodge the question? Especially if she was hiding something.

It was too soon to reach a conclusion based on her reaction, so there was no need to ask a question that would put her on guard.

Kamijou looked to the opposite bank of the river.

“But…how do we cross it? It looks too wide to swim.”

“🏊ing across would be suicide. We must use a boat. A simple raft should ❌ be too difficult to construct.”

Kamijou had pictured hell as rocky mountains and lava, but it actually had many different faces. It had forests and it had fields. The weather changed and it even rained. But he was still surprised to see Kingsford wander off and return with a toolbox she had found somewhere.

In fact…

“Um, that isn’t a torture box used for doing some DIY work on a human, is it? Y’know, like that girl in Gremlin with the silver hair and dark skin!!”

“You can’t remember her name?” growled Rosencreutz, but Kamijou chose not to react.

He wanted to hide that he had been about as serious about that comment as when watching a trivia show on TV. If the naked overalls girl with the glasses and braid found out, she would probably cry. But he could remember what she looked like at least!

“There are boats and villages in hell. And if it has been influenced enough by the Greek Tartarus, there should be an area protected by a bronze wall. So of course the tools used to build such things are lying around.”

This was the first Kamijou was hearing of this.

Were there weapon shops and inns in hell too?

“Hell will react to your unnecessary thoughts. Do you want to be pursued by obsessive oni who have boosted their deadly strength with the nonexistent legendary orichalcum series?”

CRC whispered a truly frightening idea into Kamijou’s ear. He could see that happening here. It was like the difference between a Yeti and a Yuki Onna. If the oni was a little girl oni in a tiger print bikini and with little horns growing from her head, or if it was a graceful and busty young woman oni with her kimono slipping off, he might be okay with it, but if it was a traditional muscle man oni with all the usual deadliness before even taking into account the ultimate gear, there was no upside to it at all.

But that aside, they had to build a raft.

Kamijou pictured a raft as several logs lined up side by side and tied together with rope, but apparently that wasn’t accurate.

Kingsford had also collected a few long, skinny sticks similar to clothesline poles.

Before tying them together with rope or nailing them together, she lined up the logs and poles on the ground in the general shape of the finished product. The long poles stuck out from the sides of the raft itself. And she was apparently going to tie something like empty jars or water jugs to the ends of the poles.

“What are those?”

“Tying together 🪵 will ❌ provide enough buoyancy or stability. Capsizing in a river of the ☠️ would be disastrous, don’t you think? So it’s safer to attach some extra crossarms.”

That made sense.

Jars and water jugs would act like floats using the same principle as the powerful resistance felt when trying to push a wash basin down into the bath. But where had she found those things?

The end result was shaped something like a water strider.

“Hold that 🪵 down for me. I will hold it down on this end. Oof.”

Crafting time had begun.

Kingsford lined up a few logs and tied them together with rotting rope, but that apparently wasn’t enough so she drove in a few long nails to fully fix the logs and poles together. Instead of the usual nails seen in a hardware store, she used giant nails shaped something like an upside down L. She said they were used for train tracks. Piercing the poles through would split them, so instead the horizontal protrusion of the upside down L held the thin pole tightly down instead.

However…

“Um, wait, Kingsford-san? Sensei!?”

“?”

They were jiggling.

When the racing swimsuit woman crouched down, held the nail in place with one hand, and held the hammer with her other hand, her large breasts were squeezed between her upper arms. And when she started hammering away, the jiggling began. Those huge boobs were out of control! Right in front of Kamijou!!

“I-I’m doing my best not to look, but you started doing this right in front of me, so it’s fair game for me to look, right, Sensei? You won’t be mad?”

“😠 about what?”

She looked confused.

He refused to believe she didn’t know. He took that as her hitting the “consent” button, so he replenished his mental health by enjoying the joyous view. No matter who they belonged to, big boobs were big boobs. Rejoice.

Now, the raft lacked a sail like a yacht might have.

They all pushed it down the riverbank.

From the look of it, the hell river had no current at all. The raft floated in water that seemed more like a stagnant swamp than a river. Then the three of them boarded it. Kingsford held an extra of the long poles which she stuck into the water to control the raft.

Just like in the old samurai movie Kamijou had seen while playing on TV at midday during summer break.

Instead of rowing in the water, she pressed the stick against the river bottom to push the raft forward.

And if that pole could reach the bottom, the river couldn’t be all that deep, could it?

“Falling in one of hell’s rivers would be quite the tragedy. But if you want to be stuck here for all eternity after being stained by someone else’s sin, be my guest.”

Slowly but surely, they crossed the…Phlegethon, was it?

“…”

Anyway…

This was a river.

The line between life and death was simple enough, but what did these borders within hell mean?

Kamijou had died and gone to hell, but were there any further lines he couldn’t afford to cross?

“I feel like I’ve already crossed some of those. Without really thinking about it.”

“We are aiming for a jailbreak. And we can ❌ achieve that just by doing as we are told.”

That wasn’t true.

Kingsford’s objective was the very center of the mortar-shaped hell, which was the furthest point from the gate at the entrance.

He didn’t know what she wanted to do there, though.

“There is nothing beautiful about this river 🌊, but the wind feels nice. …Phew.”

Kingsford stopped working the pole and ran a hand through her long hair shaped like a big fried shrimp.

Maybe it was from being a fiery hell, but gem-like beads of sweat scattered from her hair and a sweet aroma wafted back from her revealed nape.

“Long hair really is a pain at times like this. It gathers a lot of air, which creates a thermal insulation effect on your back.”

“Please show some restraint before a giant nape emerges from the middle of the river.”

“?”

Kamijou Touma gathered all his might to fight against his own adolescence.

The bastard sharing this raft with him began taking revenge yet again.

“The surface area on the front is far greater than on the back. You could compare it to a naked apron, or perhaps like a dorm manager? Focusing on the nape is all well and good, but do not ignore the bare shoulder blades or the line of her spine. And if you lower your gaze to the back of her hips, you can even make out the bump of her tailbone showing through the thin swim-”

“Oops, excuse me.”

“Bwohhhhhh!!” screamed CRC. The raft suddenly lost its balance just as something grabbed and tugged on his long silver beard. What did? Something that emerged from the filthy river. In fact, several giant canine heads emerged and chomped at the young old man’s beard.

“My, my. It’s Cerberus again. I should have known he would do the 🐕y paddle. Perhaps we should have defeated him on the higher level while we had the chance.”

“Do dogs just really like CRC or something?”

That one had just been some silly nonsense.

There couldn’t have been any deeper meaning.

Rosencreutz hadn’t hidden any kind of code inside it…had he?

“Ghhhh. Question, boy,” said Christian Rosencreutz, who was in a very serious situation with his prized long beard being bitten and tugged on by giant canine jaws. He took the tone of a late night chat during a school trip. “Who do you have a crush on?”

“Um…”

“You…have to think about it? Wait, wait, wait. You mean it isn’t Anna Kingsford!? Then why the giant boobs and butt? Didn’t you dream of an older dorm manager in a naked apron? A-adolescence is so cruel. Are you telling me you were only ever interested in her body!?”

“Old man, you’re just trying to stir up trouble again, aren’t you? You want to increase Kingsford’s hate value and direct it this way so she’ll attack me in the middle of a river where I have nowhere to run!!”

“But none of that refutes my asser- bghbbhfgbfgh!?”

To silence this massive conspiracy, Kamijou crouched down and grabbed the red-clad old man’s ankles. He then flipped the man over, held him up by the ankles, and dipped his head into the stagnant river so he couldn’t say anything else. The world knew peace once more.

Anna Kingsford used the long pole to keep the raft moving along.

“And we’re there.”

They had arrived on the opposite bank.

They might need to turn back at some point, so they pulled the raft up onto the land so it wouldn’t float away. It looked light while afloat, but it was so heavy when dragging it along the ground. Which made sense when it was made from several logs. And the raft shape meant they couldn’t roll it along.

A question suddenly occurred to Kamijou.

In a way, there was no question where a horrific expert like Christian Rosencreutz would go when he died. Kamijou could accept his own destination too. He had selfishly chosen death and brought sorrow to quite a few people, so he wasn’t going to complain about winding up in hell.

But.

What was that purely good and benevolent expert doing here?

Maybe she could switch between life and death at will by switching off her preserved corpse. But wouldn’t someone so dedicated to goodness end up in heaven after death?

Yes.

What if Anna Kingsford was also the kind of person who would be damned to hell?

===Part 3===

Kamijou had pictured hell as dark, empty, and dry.

He had also associated it with heat and flames.

But he noticed things gradually changing as he followed carefully after Anna Kingsford.

He felt chilly.

He looked around and noticed he could see his breath.

“We are approaching the bottom of hell,” said Rosencreutz. His breath was visible too. “Boy, have you ever encountered the term Cocytus?”

“Isn’t it usually a kind of ice magic, or a magic sword?”

“But where did modern people find the term they now incorporate into their entertainment?” The young man stroked his long, long beard. “Cocytus is the name of the bottom level of hell. And Cocytus itself is divided into four areas like the rings of a tree stump: Caina, Antenora, Ptolomea, and Judecca. From outermost to innermost area, the severity of the sin grows and the very center area – Judecca – is where the world’s three most sinful people are eternally punished until the day the world ends.”

“…Wait. ''Did you say three''?”

“My, what a predicament. This old man is quite concerned by how perfectly the numbers match up.”

Kamijou looked to Kingsford’s back as she continued walking through this frozen world.

The three of them were walking through hell. Toward the prison for the three most sinful people.

Could there be something there?

But wait…

(That logic would mean Kingsford was leading herself to her doom too. If she wanted to take us to the bottom of hell to trap us, she would need another person with us.)

Think as he might, he couldn’t figure out what she was after.

And without knowing that, he couldn’t prepare.

His anxiety grew.

Their surroundings became darker and the chill much more biting, hinting that something was changing. He had to do something soon, but he couldn’t even run off at random while he was guided deeper and deeper.

That was like running full tilt in a random direction inside a trap-filled pyramid because he couldn’t trust his guide.

He should have thought for himself more.

If he had at least kept track of the path they took, he could have turned back the way they had come. Then he could have at least safely reached the gate to hell.

He could tell he was being guided down a path.

A wide world was spread out around him, but he couldn’t escape that path.

That only worried him more.

“What is this place?”

The deepest depths of hell were covered in ice.

It looked a lot like a vast subterranean lake that had fully frozen, but he couldn’t tell if there actually was any water below the thick layer of ice. And that ice was a lot clearer than he had expected.

He had expected the center of hell to be a vortex of dark filth, but maybe this was like an isekai fantasy where the demon world was generally dark and creepy but the demon lord’s castle was bright and shiny inside.

That meant this was a special location.

Kamijou didn’t know much about the layout of the European hell, but he could tell that much.

Anna Kingsford came to a stop.

The benevolent expert had continued unstopping for so long, but here she stopped.

After leading them this deep with such confidence, he was afraid she was about to turn around with a smile and say she was lost, but apparently not.

“This is the place,” she said.

There was…

…something there.

Kamijou’s breath caught in his throat.

There was nothing like that in the world of the living. That was a monster you had to die and go to hell to see. It was bad news. It was somehow different from powerful foes like Othinus and Aleister. He could tell just coexisting in the same place as it would lead to his destruction.

Before he could even grasp its true nature, he saw just a vague silhouette.

What would happen if he did get a direct view of it?

He usually thought of darkness as something that brought unease and fear to the human heart. This wasn’t just his view. Giving the light side the position of the good guys was common across the globe.

But things worked differently here.

Was the deep darkness a comfort here? Because he wanted to avoid viewing the ''thing'' that lurked beyond that thick veil before he was ready.

Kingsford had said Greek mythology had Nyx, goddess of the night.

So had there been an age when this sort of comfort was valued to the point it was worshiped as a god?

He must not see that.

Seeing it would mean his demise.

No one had told him that and he hadn’t actually checked for himself, but he could just tell. No matter what power might reside in his right hand, he could never even stand up to that thing.

“The 👑 of the demons…or the 👑 of hell,” said Anna Kingsford.

Was this her goal?

To contact that thing?

“Some 💬 he is Satan, some 💬 Beelzebub, and others 💬 Lucifer, but he has only one role. To provide the ultimate punishment by eternally gnawing on the three greatest sinners. In this view of hell, the demon 👑 has rebelled against god and gathers strength in the depths of the earth, yet he is still doing the will of god by tormenting the sinners damned by god.”

“What…?”

Kamijou was dumbfounded.

What did Kingsford hope to accomplish here? Kamijou had been led down here by deception, but she had come here of her own free will. She had come to this extremely dangerous place where a great monster lurked in the shadows. If Kamijou had full control of the situation, he never would have come here no matter his goal and no matter what benefits it might provide. So why had Kingsford come here?

“What are we supposed to do here, Kingsford!? I thought you said our journey would take us from hell and return us to the world of the living!!”

“I did.”

The benevolent expert – or the woman wearing that mask – immediately nodded.

With a smile.

Would she offer Kamijou and Rosencreutz’s souls to that giant thing lurking in the shadows so it would send her back to the living world? That useless idea came to Kamijou’s mind. But no amount of speculation would give Kamijou any kind of useful answer or countermeasure.

However.

“Like I 💬d back at the beginning, hell is shaped like a mortar,” she said.

…?

Nothing had changed?

She spoke in the same gentle way she always did.

But now that she had the other two in the depths of hell, she no longer needed that good guy act.

“So if you wish to take the shortest route from hell to the living world, the answer is obvious: You secure a ↕️ starting at the very bottom and climb up. That is the only way.”

“Oh.”

“When people 💭 up this structure of hell based on the limited depictions in Revelation and other sources, elevators, 🚁s, and 🚀s did ❌ yet exist. Only the 🪽ed angels in charge of hell could take that vertical route. They used it as a shortcut.”

Something sparkled in front of her.

It looked like tiny particles.

But it wasn’t. It was something made of highly transparent glass. A thick pane. And more of them floated in the air with a regular pattern. It looked like a spiral staircase to Kamijou. But as his gaze traveled up the clear staircase, perspective threw off the sense of scale and it ended up looking like a single line of light shining down from heaven.

“The gate to hell is often mentioned, but it is never mentioned that turning back there will bring you back to life. When standing on the outer edge of a mortar, what good is walking further outwards? If you try that, you will end up forever wandering in the dark forest at the top level of hell.”

So…

What did that mean?

When Anna Kingsford led him from the gate to the very bottom of hell, she hadn’t had any kind of ulterior motive? She had simply chosen the shortest and quickest route to escape straight up from the bottom?

She hadn’t been hiding anything.

Was that really all it was?

“The Qliphoth references the territory stretching from the living world to hell. If you contact it while viewing it as a heretical thing that specializes in 👻s and curses, it will bring disaster, but the Crowley faction has a fully-equipped expert very carefully contact it to acquire countless tricks and loopholes ❌ found in the proper methods.” Kingsford stared at the sparkling staircase as she presented a miracle, free of charge. “And the standard meditation technique of the Crowley faction says the one and only way to travel between worlds is to ascend vertically while ❌ being tempted to either side by existing standards of morality. …If you were to directly visualize the modern theory, it might look something like this.”

There was nothing more to Anna Kingsford.

She really had stopped her own functioning to leave the living world and descend into hell for no other reason than to save Kamijou Touma. Free of charge. She gained nothing at all from this.

Kamijou was the one being saved, but he had still doubted her.

It was like red cabbage indicator.

Or like this hell.

What someone thought when faced with Kingsford’s true benevolence revealed how shameful they were. There was no hiding it before that true expert. In the face of the ultimate righteousness, the very act of feeling shame and trying to hide something would reveal that something.

Yes.

Now that he knew Anna Kingsford was innocent, a new question came to Kamijou’s mind.

Why had he begun doubting her in the first place?

However it had started, that doubt was his own. He wasn’t going to blame his own ugliness on someone else. But it had started somewhere. There had been an initial push that had led him to doubt that benevolent expert who had thrown out her own life for pure volunteerism.

It wasn’t a difficult question.

The process of elimination was enough to solve it.

It hadn’t been benevolent Kingsford. It was the ugliness in Kamijou’s heart that let him be influenced, but he had only been influenced. It was someone else who had guided him in that wicked direction.

Who else was here in hell?

When the two of them were removed from the three, who remained?

Kamijou Touma spoke the name of the culprit.

“''Christian…Rosencreutz''?”

===Part 4===

Time froze.

Kamijou Touma couldn’t believe it.

But maybe that disbelief was proof that he had already been taken in.

There was precedent.

Rosencreutz was the opposite of benevolent expert Kingsford. Unlike the common legend, he was an expert who selfishly and capriciously spread death.

Had Kamijou forgotten how dangerous he was?

Had he forgotten what had happened in Academy City?

He had been deceived by the idea of a truth that couldn’t be found by simply following the righteous path, a cynical view, a possibility of using a trick or a loophole.

Hadn’t Kingsford said that the Qliphoth could only be used by a fully-equipped expert? And that any normal person contacting it would simply be engulfed by disaster?

This was the stereotypical example.

If Kamijou had doubted Kingsford enough to part with her, what would have happened to him in this hell?

Demons did not rely on simple physical strength or shoot fire from their mouth. They used apparent kindness and tempting words to send people racing toward a mistaken ending. Everyone knew demons were dangerous, but they assumed they alone were built different and could take advantage of the world’s hidden rules to escape unscathed.

Kamijou had been directed toward his own doom to eliminate him without Rosencreutz having to dirty his own hands.

Was that why Anna Kingsford had responded so coldly to Christian Rosencreutz when compared to Kamijou?

“That expert was back at work even if he had to do so from beyond the 🪦. Just ☠️ing you once was never going to be enough, was it, CRC?”

Kamijou had thought it was just the difference between an amateur high school boy and a professional expert.

But the answer was simpler: CRC was the villain from the very beginning. Kamijou had completely forgotten, but the benevolent expert had seen right through him all along.

Anna Kingsford revealed people’s true nature in a different way from hell.

Not only had she revealed Kamijou Touma’s shameful side like a red cabbage indicator, but she had also stripped away the demon’s kind and pretty makeup to reveal the true nature hidden below.

The one and only villain had been obvious from the very beginning: Christian Rosencreutz.

“This hell…”

He was shaken. The silver-haired young man in red trembled and raised his voice.

Was this some kind of irony?

Or did hell flip everything on its head?

The death-dealing man was pleading his own righteousness.

“This hell is a great device meant for this old man. This old man made it himself!! It is not for the two of you who showed up later!”

“?”

Kamijou didn’t understand.

“🎯.”

But the benevolent expert did.

Generally speaking, there was nothing she did not know. Nor did she stray from righteousness. To oppose her was a truly terrible idea. Not because of her strength in battle. No matter who you were, if you opposed her, that alone was proof that your being or thoughts were not righteous.

“This is ❌ the real hell,” said the benevolent expert. “It is a temporary space created by combining different 🖼️es of hell. It covers up a supposedly ☠️ soul with a phony hell to shuffle its destination and forcibly convert its affiliation to a vague near-☠️ state that is neither wholly alive nor wholly ☠️. It exists solely to fake the qualifications needed to return a ☠️ soul to the living world. Simply put, it provides a miraculous survival after the fact.”

This was not the real hell.

Kamijou had seen figures flitting through the shadows and legs sticking upside-down from the ground. But he had mostly passed them by as just a part of hell instead of trying to save those suffering people. Thinking back, that felt unnatural, but did this explain why?

Everything here, including those figures, had been hollow, so none of it sparked any emotion in him.

But…

“Are you saying you created this resurrection zone?”

“❌.”

Kingsford immediately rejected that idea.

Unlike the masses who had once been swept up by the Rosicrucian movement, she would not bend the truth for her own advantage.

“This hell was inserted by Johann Valentin Andreae who is currently going by Christian Rosencreutz.”

“You mean…?”

Come to think of it…

If Kingsford had created this hell, how had Rosencreutz ended up here? If she had only wanted to save Kamijou, only the two of them needed to be here.

Rosencreutz was a mystery addition.

''Except he wasn’t.

“We found Rosencreutz at the gate – at the very starting point of hell. But we never saw when he arrived here.”

“Of course you didn’t. This old man arrived here first. It’s you two who arrived later who don’t belong here!!”

“🎯, that is true.” The righteous one never made any attempt to hide anything. “But I made a promise to Aleister that I would save Kamijou Touma ❌ matter how much I must break the rules. So I must keep that promise. CRC, I will do so even it means breaking your pure but destructive ambition and using it for my own ends.”

“This old man will be resurrected.”

“So you can remove all trace of Rosicrucianism from the present 🌍?”

“This old man has things he must do in the living world!! So I cannot remain here!!”

“Even if that would result in the direct destruction of the 🪄 side’s countless 🪄 cabals and the resultant chaos would indirectly cause the science side to collapse as well?”

The hell this group had walked through all this time was a temporary space created by Rosencreutz so he his dead soul could return to the realm of the living.

But Kamijou and Kingsford had broken into it.

That was the accurate view here.

That was why Johann’s past and sins had been revealed along the way. The path had been tuned to him from the very beginning.

And Rosencreutz wouldn’t have cared as long as he could achieve his jailbreak. And if he had only paid the smallest possible cost to escape this hell, Kamijou could guess at something else.

That is…

“''This hell was only made to return a single soul to life''.”

“…Are you going to take it from me?”

“After the damage it took, Academy City is in ❌ state to endure another attack by CRC. A second attack would truly finish it. Johann, your resurrection must be 🛑ed at all costs.”

“You are going to steal this old man’s seat!? By giving the resurrection ticket to Kamijou Touma who so conveniently died, you will waste that one and only ticket so that ''this old man can never be resurrected''!!!”

“The boy’s ☠️ was inevitable. Nothing at all could be done to prevent it. So the best option was to take that ☠️ into account and find a way to still save him. And it is my responsibility for making use of him to send his young soul back to the living 🌍 where there is so much he has left undone.”

That was all of it.

But this did not account for two things: Anna Kingsford and Christian Rosencreutz.

“❌ matter how powerful we are, we are 🧙s who have already ☠️ed. I will not allow either of us to foolishly and shamefully resurrect ourselves at the expense of a still-living boy. The 🎟️ to survival should go to the living, CRC. So with just the one 🎟️ available, we should hand it to the boy. It is ❌ our place to intrude.”

Kingsford did not hesitate.

From the very beginning, she had not even considered the possibility of her own resurrection.

“Young lady…are you really satisfied by that?”

“I am.”

“By that silly argument!!!? T-this isn’t just about this old man. You really can reach the door to the realm of the living. If you were to abandon that boy and resurrect yourself, you could save far more people. Since you name yourself an expert, you must be able to perform the actual calculation. So why give him the ticket!? Why throw out your life for such foolishness!?”

“Everything I do is in service of those around me. Even if that was all nonsense you wrote for a prank and even if the groups naming themselves followers of the 🌹 and the ✝️ were something else entirely, there were indeed experts who believed in the ideals ✍️en there and dedicated their lives to upholding them. Those true experts saved people in secret and many people reclaimed their ☺️s thanks to them. I am merely joining their ranks. As long as there is a lost one before me and I have been blessed with the opportunity to provide a helping ✋, it makes little difference if it all began as a truth or a lie.”

“…”

“CRC did ❌ actually exist? Rosicrucianism was a made up story? You can tell me that all you like, but there is ❌ need for me to come up with some clever trick to counter it. I need only 💬 that I truly believe in the great deeds carried out in Rosencreutz’s name. Christian Rosencreutz – or the illusion of him – has moved many 🧙s’ ❤️s into saving so many people. And so I wish to become one such 🧙 and join the ranks of my predecessors.”

“…………………………………………………………………………………………”

Silence.

Even Rosencreutz was driven to silence.

“Blessed with,” Kingsford had said. If not for the excess baggage that was Kamijou, she could have used this to resurrect herself. In fact, she wouldn’t have had to visit hell in the first place.

But she felt no hesitation or reluctance.

She was really and truly looking only toward sending Kamijou Touma back to life.

And by preventing CRC’s resurrection here, she could save Academy City and the world as a whole.

Even if he had been cleverly tempted into doubting her.

The complete lack of doubt in her eyes made Kamijou feel his own foolishness all the more vividly.

“This old man won’t let you.”

The expert who spread death and destruction had failed.

He had said death was the default state for the dead and that Kingsford must have some kind of ulterior motive. But after all that whispering in Kamijou’s ear, this was his true nature.

He was only interested in himself.

Once you knew that, the truth or fiction of the rest of the information fell into place nicely.

“This old man created this hell!! So whatever you say, this old man will be using it! You wretched thieves. Act as benevolent as you like, this old man holds the legitimate claim here!!”

“Weren’t you 👂ing, CRC?”

“Kh.”

“I promised to save Kamijou Touma ''❌ matter how much I must break the rules''.”

CRC. Christian Rosencreutz.

Or Johann Valentin Andreae.

His true nature was dangerous through and through. Kamijou couldn’t forget what he had done in Academy City. But at the same time, that silver-haired young man in red had never once lied to himself. Even if that worked against him and led to his own downfall.

He had in fact wandered between the realms of life and death for more than 400 years.

He had just one goal: take responsibility for what he had done.

That was all.

So the man who had once been a 15-year-old boy had turned himself into a monster.

He had achieved this after so much hardship, so what was the point? He wasn’t gathering wealth or fortune for himself.

That didn’t matter to him.

He hadn’t done it for his own happiness.

He had continued on while thinking only of punishing himself.

He had thrown out his name of Johann Valentin Andreae and dressed up as the person he most loathed: the fictional Christian Rosencreutz. He had poured all his energies into eradicating the Rosicrucian legend spreading through the public consciousness, but he had failed to keep up with the self-replication rate of the story spread by word of mouth and the story’s own inventor had ultimately become a corpse and vanished from history.

“This old man will be resurrected.”

This identity.

And his sins.

They had both been revealed by the benevolent mirror, but Rosencreutz still gnashed his teeth and roared.

“It will happen, no matter the damage to my reputation and even if this old man must abandon himself to do it!! Can you do that, boy? You cannot even have a dream for your future or a picture of what occupation you will take up. But do you still claim to have a reason to crave resurrection that surpasses this old man’s 400 years of regret and resentment!!?”

The words pushed in.

Like a great invisible wave.

Kamijou Touma was in fact a mere high school boy who hadn’t even decided if he would continue on to college or get a job after graduating. Presented with the 400 years of persistence and righteousness of Christian Rosencreutz after becoming one with a legend, he could easily lose sight of his position and have his soul shattered.

“Are you kidding me?”

But he managed to speak.

He didn’t even need to use his right fist. His words alone shattered a 400-year-old illusion.

He wouldn’t doubt himself anymore.

It was easy to listen to tempting words. At times, joining the dangerous one in skepticism could look more clever than trusting as the benevolent one did. But that was wrong. The truth was straightforward. Always choosing the clever and sly path was not guaranteed to take you to a happy future. Trusting a shady expert could make you a laughing stock, but that did not mean that always doubting anything and everything would make you happy. Forcing yourself to always take a cynical view accomplished nothing.

You had to decide for yourself.

Focus your mind there and you would feel a great power in your heart.

No one was asking you to choose based on what was more solid, more clever, more savvy.

To put it another way, what was wrong with making the flimsy, silly, and foolish choice?

So.

The words seemed to come to Kamijou Touma’s lips of their own accord.

He did not lower his head.

He stared straight ahead and accepted the deadly expert’s gaze head on.

“I want to talk with Index again.”

“I want to return to Academy City and apologize to Misaka and the others I worried so much. As many times as it takes for them to forgive me.”

“I want to see Aogami Pierce, Fukiyose, and the others at school during the third term and discuss our winter breaks. I want to enjoy our time together at school now that we’re second and third years!”

“I want to wipe away Alice Anotherbible’s tears with this hand – this fingertip – right here!! I want to tell her I died because of my own choice and it wasn’t her fault! 400 years of regret and resentment? Sure, I don’t have anything on that grand a scale. But that doesn’t mean it’s any better than my reasons, CRC!!!”

Anna Kingsford said nothing, but she did appear to be smiling.

She may have seen a small, pale light.

All people had the right to live and hope.

All people had the right to work toward bettering themselves.

Kamijou Touma would use all of his rights here. He would throw out the arrogant idea that he should back down or give up in advance due to some kind of hierarchy or ranking. He would return to the living world no matter what. And if Rosencreutz was trying to once more bring ruin to Academy City and the rest of the world, he would do whatever it took to put a stop to it.

CRC.

This wasn’t like before.

He couldn’t rely on everyone else in Academy City.

This time, just the puny boy had to challenge that man and win.

So what?

If it had to be done, then it was up to whoever was here to save the world.

Strongly.

Kamijou Touma clenched his right fist very, very strongly.

“Christian Rosencreutz.”

“Why did that power choose you? Why can you have it without any kind of objective or direction for it?”

But this received an odd reaction.

It came from CRC’s expression.

His face crumpled up, but not in rage or resentment. The faintest hint of envy was displayed there.

“if you believe you can achieve your dream by trampling everyone else underfoot…”

“If this old man only had that…if my hand only possessed that one supernatural power…”

“And if you intend to continue destroying the world once you return there…”

“This old man wouldn’t have had to wander for 400 years! I could have destroyed the illusion of the rose and the cross back theeeeeeeeeeeeeeen!!!”

The boy made his announcement all the same.

He trusted that it still remained in his right hand.

It too must have stuck around because he wasn’t really dead yet.

So he came out and said it.

“Then I’ll destroy that illusion!!!”

===Monsters===

'''Lord of Demons

The demon lord found at the center of hell’s bottom level. Has six wings and three faces used to gnaw on the three most sinful people. Referred to by different names, such as Satan, Lucifer, and Beelzebub. When he fell from heaven, even the ground bent and fell away to avoid him, producing the great crater now known as hell.

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